Just...................whatever

Petty, that was beautiful.  Do you feel Thatcher's right to buy policy was one of the good things to come out of her administration?  Are there unintended consequences?

On another note, every so often I go on a fast to give my intestines a rest (they let me know when they need one), and I usually only do 36 hours: dinner one night, then skip a day and have breakfast the next day.  And the first day i spend the whole time dreaming of the upcoming breakfast while gnawing on small quantities of zero calorie vegetables like carrots and steamed cabbage.

But then that morning comes, and my body just....doesn't care.  All my cravings are gone and eating seems like an intellectual exercise.  And it was such a great breakfast I had planned based on Korean street food: first gently saute some spicy salami to render out the fat; then in that spicy sheen you brown a slab of finely chopped cabbage, carrots, onion and pepper bound together with a single egg and minced garlic; top it with the toasted salami and melt cheese over it; put it between whole wheat toast slavered with mayo and mustard with slices of tomato lending their juiciness....I'm trying to make myself hungry but my body has switched to burning it's own fat and it just doesn't give a rat's ass.

I suppose I'll shove it off to lunch.

Petty, I think you are right and that kind of belonging may have all but gone. I remember seeing people in the terrace houses leaving their doors open during the day, nowadays that would be seen as madness, just asking to be robbed and murdered. There was a sense of respect, morals, and working class ethics. That's gone, well at least in cities anyway

Lancebloke wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:Three random questions. 1. Do any of you talk to yourself? and 2. Are any of you left handed? and do you believe in coincidences?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/are-coincidences-real

this article is really interesting, and the personality disorder he talks about, I have defo got it.

Didn't read the article but always happy to answer a survey!

1) I dont talk out loud to myself but I do think. I wouldn't say I have an internal monologue with myself either outside of things like 'You fucking idiot' when I do something particularly stupid.

2) Nope

3) I'm not sure coincidence is something to believe in, isn't it just a thing? It would be a coincidence that my pen broke and a random stranger happened to find one left on a table to be able to offer it to me.

I also think human brains have evolved to see patterns in things so wrong often see coincidences when they are not.

I very much don't believe in destiny (as in things are 'meant' to happen) or free will for that matter.

Some coincidences are pretty astoundingly weird, and I have definitely felt that a thing, whatever it is, feels 'meant'. I have felt that a couple of times in my life, as if it was pre-jigged to happen, and it did.

I think that is because humans have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to recognise those kinds of things (to stop us getting eaten etc). That just means that sometimes we see a pattern or an intent that just isn't there.

It is also why there are many things that human brains just cannot deal with very well, like huge numbers. We often have to train ourselves out of instinctual thought patterns to do many things.

I just reviewed a paper for a scientific journal in which the authors had done a number of more or less random tests, and when 10% of them came up positive they masked all the losing ones and said "in these cases we see an effect!"

I was pretty scathing in my review. I ran a trial of random numbers and came up with slightly less effect than what they had seen; basically they had cherry picked random coincidences and said they had discovered something. Even people who should know better can fall for this, you have to train yourself out of ascribing significance until you see a full-fledged pattern.

ok I will give you one of my random coincidence experiences. When I first moved to Italy I would occasionally visit my parents in Manchester, and one day I decided to go shopping in the city centre. I hadn't been back to that part of the city for about ten years. I was wandering around aimlessly when I walked past my old opticians. On the spur of the moment i decided to go in and ask for my prescription as I had lost it. I went in and was directed to the basement where they did contact lense stuff. The room was basically empty but for a large desk and doors leading off. One of the doors opened and the optician asked me what I wanted. I explained that I hadn't been back to her shop for ten years and told her my name. She looked down at the only piece of paper on the desk and went as white as a sheet. She looked up at me and said, "is this your prescription" and I said "yup, how did you know I was coming". And she said " I didn't, and we don't keep any records here any more".

Yeah, that pretty much takes the cake.

And because it happened to you, you see something in it that most likely isn't true... some kind of intent somewhere (an act of god, the universe doing universe things, destiny, karma... whatever).

Nobody thinks about a) the millions of people that have gone looming for a prescription that this didn't happen to (including those that end up having theirs found behind a filing cabinet 10 years after they died) and b) what could have possibly led to that happening.

We only notice things we deem abnormal and then we try to fill in some gaps to make them normal. If we can't properly investigate, most likely because we are just not able to, then we fill in the blanks with other things.

ok fair enough, but the look on that woman's face I will remember forever. She looked at me half accusingly as if I did it on purpose, and half in disbelief. it was quite something.

I have many other weird shit coincidences which makes absolutely no sense but were powerful for all that.

On related lines, has anyone seen Derren Brown's latest show called Showman? It's been on Channel 4 in the UK but not sure if it is available anywhere else.

I have VPN so I can watch it. But I  haven't yet. It seems like a mass hypnosis thing. I cant be hypnotised so I am very sceptical. I know I cant be hypnotised because I went to a therapist to get hypnotised because of my PTSD/anorexia due to the pandemic, and she couldn't do it. I kept saying 'have you hypnotised me yet?', and she said 'no, you wont let me'. So you have to want to be hypnotised.

Hypnosis is largely a voluntary thing. You can perhaps be fooled into being hypnotized, but only if you have acquiesced in some way without realizing it is a road to hypnosis. But some people are just too ornery.

I can only halfway be hypnotized. There's a part of me always standing off to the side trying to analyze what's going on. It's not total submission.

Ornery. I had never heard that word before, but it sums me up perfectly.

It's worth a watch. I imagine there are things that you could both be influenced by if you weren't directly aware of it.

I went to the live show and can say for the first time I had a moment... more 10-20 seconds that I have no recollection of!!

Ornery rarely shows up in print, but it's very common in conversational American English.  Tomcats are typically ornery critters.  So are New Jersey girls. Scotshobbits are definitely ornery.

Scotshobbits invented it .

{{ I fail to see what's wrong with 'crabbit' besides, I'm not 'difficult to deal with' (N. American definiton) you bunch of bastards! Wheres my sober stick? That's the stick I keep for beating sober wisecunts with See nothing 'difficult' about getting twatted over the nogin with extreme crabbit prejudice }}

Nana nana nana nana baatmaaaan! 

Lordi. Warming up for Sabaton.  

Ama is enjoying herself  

{{ Is it Devil Worshipping and Headbanging Day again on the Dark Planet! }}

And health and safety day! Do's and don'ts in to use the  extinguisher. It's  a glorious day. 

I get the sense Am's a couple drinks in....

Indeed!   Had a great time! 

After Lordi there was Baby Metal which is Japanese kawaii metal (!) Then the main act of Sabaton who sing of historical events and WWII. What's not to love?

I saw Nightwish a few months back, they were great.

Haven't really gotten in to much more of that end of the metal scene though. Babymetal always seem more about the show than the music.

I wouldn't mind seeing all 3 live as most live music is good.

I didn't know anything about Babymetal before this, it was certainly more about being cute than metal. But fun in small portions.

We'll see Nightwish at Tons of Rock in Oslo this summer and I'm very excited about that. I listened to them a lot in my student days but never thought I'd see them live.