Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP The absolute state of 2019 is that millions of vapid young people, followed by millions more vapid young people, make serious bank just by virtue of being really, really, really ridiculously good looking and posting about it online. But for your Instagram "influencer" game to be truly lit, you need that exclusive, glamorous …
Could you warn people when linking to KRM's comic? I mean, I look at the url but not everybody does.
And I really cannot see what's wrong with "influencers" visiting Chernobyl. It's a lot cheaper than building and launching an actual space ark, and these days anyway the job of telephone sanitiser has more or less ceased to exist, so what's the potential downside?
(Icon nearest I could find to view of someone standing in front of a radiation source).
I would guess that a flail mower is a drum with lengths of chain hanging from it, that use brute force to cut things instead of a single spinning blade. Great for never jamming, or stalling if it hits something like a tree. But it tends to leave things looking like they were cut with a machine gun.
I believe a "flail mower" might be a wheeled, upscaled weed-whacker (UK: Strimmer).
The materials used in the flail might vary depending on the expected brush to be demolished.
All guess work.
Later
Completely wrong, except for the "materials used" bit. It's a small cousin to a mine flail. It appears it thrashes the brush into submission.
I approve.
I think you're right. If you travel down country roads, and see the hedgerows and trees looking like they've been in a fight with a tank, all splintered and torn, you're probably looking at the results of one of these. It was probably wielded by a local farmer with a contract with the council.
I've never thought it was a good look for our countryside.
Boring facts: A flail mower consist of a row or rows of fairly heavy steel J shaped picks fixed on a hinge to an axle so that when spun at high speed so the bottom of the J would be travelling left as typed acting like a blunt chisel is can cut through most vegetation and if it cant the hinge allows it to move out of the way and then centripetal force will fling it out again for another go on the next rotation.
Bloody effective at making hedges look shit but rectilinear and not in the way any more. More importantly they are cheap to run so (like pothole repairs that are not done) you save on your council tax and ruin the countryside (and pay more overall for wheel-rims and suspension etc).
I have about a mile of hedge on a shared access lane and its flailed every year and it is not good for the hedges in the long run but its hard work with a hand held hedgecutter!
"If you travel down country roads, and see the hedgerows and trees looking like they've been in a fight with a tank, all splintered and torn, you're probably looking at the results of one of these."
That look is the result of poor equipment and poor maintenance and infrequent cutting. Done properly a flail cutter (the things used for hedges are different to the things used for cutting grass) leaves a perfect finish. But the hedge needs to be cut at least a couple of times a year. Stingy landowners have the hedges cut once every five years and that means having to cut through large branches resulting in the splintered look. The council maintains very few hedges, usually only the ones that confine land owned by the council.
"I would guess that a flail mower is a drum with lengths of chain hanging from it, that use brute force to cut things instead of a single spinning blade."
As the owner of a flail mower (and the tractor to power it) I have to say that you are a bit wide of the mark. Chains don't feature in the design because they tend to break creating a danger of flying shrapnel. There's a rotating shaft fitted with bearings. In the UK flail mowers tend to have flimsy "Y" or "J" shaped blades that are bolted to these bearings. They scalp the vegetation and can be knocked out of the way if they hit a rock or large branch.
Italian and Japanese flail mowers tend to be much more rugged and have hammers that look a little like an old fashioned adze with a sharp leading edge. These devices can be regulated for height and are capable of cutting wood up to about 50mm in diameter. Same bearing arrangement but the mowers are designed to achieve a lawn finish even when cutting grass up to 5ft high.
The underside of the mower looks like this: Flail mower hammers.
Hence the preferred term The Dirty Digger. Though it's a jingoistic term, coined by drunk arts-educated English public school boys believing that all Aussies were either criminals, miners - or worse, their colleague Barry Humphreys - I don't think Rupert 'Stick it up your Junta' Murdoch can complain.
Ignorance is the opportunity for teaching and learning. I'm ignorant of many things, not because I'm unwilling, but there are only 20 or so usable hours in a day, 9 are spent twiddling bits, 3-4 caring for\enjoying family and by that time I doubt my brain is ready for input
I had no freakin' idea what an 'influencer' was until now. Wish I didn't, the damage is done.
Ignorance is an unwillingness to learn
*Willing* Ignorance is an unwillingness to learn. Ignorance per-se can be cured but only if the ignorant one is willing to amend that state.
In the dim and distant past (when I used to assist with the technical part of the interview process) I was always more happy with the candidates that said "I don't know but I can find out" rather than the ones that tried to bluff and pretend that they knew when they obviously didn't..
"Standing in front of a radiation source" - I think you want something like "Dr. Bruce Banner is bathed in the full force of the mysterious gamma rays".
i.e. https://www.blogs.unicamp.br/ciencianerd/hulk/ (a little way down the page)
Watch him boogie (still picture). http://jwong.freeshell.org/origin.html catches it well, too.
As does "that" scene inside #441, "Hulk Fiction" (in which Mrs. Hulk plans her memoirs...but Bruce's cousin the "She-Hulk" poses for the cover).
While it has been shown that limited areas of the brain do spawn new neurons in adult life they in no way 'grow a brain', they more patch it. Superhero fiction apart mutations affect your offspring. In you they either kill cells or spawn cancers or make cancers more nasty and invasive and drug resistant.
Whether you think getting cancer might benefit the influencers, the type has been known to fake cancer for the extra clicks so perhaps not.
And just to explain the effects of an extreme-dosage of ionising radiation on the nervous system... the thing that's going to kill you is all the messenger & transfer RNA being machine-gunned to pieces. There won't be time for your cells to recreate enough of it, especially from the now damaged DNA, to keep your little grey cells supplied with neurotransmitter molecules before they all get used up. Once your stock is depleted, which they say takes about 5 minutes, your neurones will stop talking to each other and you'll basically suffocate when your diaphragm stops moving or goes into spasm; but you won't feel anything as your consciousness will have dissipated by then due to generalised disruption of cortex wide synchronisation.
Nice thought to go to bed on.
I have to say that if I knew I was going to die of something starting in five minutes, that doesn't sound too bad at all.
Perhaps we should suggest it to the Americans who enjoy executing people who are only guilty of being black in the wrong place.
Knowing you are going to die and not feel it while all the people gathered to watch are going to die more or less slowly of radiation sickness would be small, not non-zero consolation.
And I was only talking from a neurological point of view. The effect on the rest of the body is somewhat akin to being microwaved whilst stood under a sun lamp. There's probably a sweet spot in the dosage that will cause the neurological death before heat death, but I'm not volunteering to find out where that is. Suffice it to say that I don't know if you'd be writhing in pain akin to sunburn or not before you passed out, then stopped breathing. As you don't tend to feel your skin burning from intense sun until 6 hours or more later, then I suspect you'd just be feeling a bit hot and blistery and thinking you're definitely going to be peeling tomorrow before you zonked.
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"Perhaps we should suggest it to the Americans who enjoy executing people who are only guilty of being black in the wrong place."
Someone got their before you. James Blish the author of "They Shall Have Stars" which features the Dillon-Wagoner Graviton Polarity Generator, known as the spindizzy, mentions the use of exposure to high-level atomic waste as a method of execution. Alaska's Senator Bliss Wagoner is executed in this manner for diverting public funds to the research programme to develop the spindizzy, starting with the construction of a bridge on Jupiter as a testbench for gravity research. It also features an early discussion of drones and telepresence. The Senator himself explains that the method of execution was chosen to instil fear into the public, but that in actual fact it's relatively fast and relatively painless.
I went to Cambridge. Last week. New Raspberry Pi shop in Grand Arcade. Definitely worth a look.
Where dusty & musty language professors can be heard grumbling about why the great vowel shift has simply gone too far! First, foisting the accursed 'J' on us, now dropping the 'e'. But then as modern restaurants are places to be seen at, rather than fed properly, may as well drop the 'e' from eat as well. Not even an organic raspberry in sight, and next they'll be trying to force colleges to drop swans from the menu..
To be fair, that's perfectly reasonable.
If you're socialising with someone, on virtually any level, there's an excellent chance that sooner or later you'll find yourselves eating together. It's one of the biggest social rituals we have. When that day comes, you wouldn't want to unwittingly take the poor broccoli-botherer to Hagar's House of Ribs, would you?
Q. How do you know if somebody is a Vegan?
A. They are short, stocky and have scaly skin, have good spatial perception do better in zero-g than most races and make excellent pilots. They are also loyal and fiercely competitive - but they tend to like their food on the 'still wriggling' side of rare. Which is not really surprising since their ancestors were reptilian hunter-gatherers.
About the only trait they share with the ape-descended name-stealers here on Earth is that they can't help telling anyone who will listen just how damn good they are...
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Apparently wolves are surviving quite well in the forbidden zone, perhaps we can look forward to a really, really good looking vapid couple being eaten by a pack of mutant wolves on Instagram?
Sometimes I think the world is about ready for another extinction event, sooner or later something worthwhile is going to evolve.
I've been! I've stood by that fairground, and by that swimming pool.. And it's a very strange place. The haste in which it was eventually abandoned is obvious by the stuff still laying around. Other than where it's been looted by Ukraine's very own roadside picnicers. It's an eerie experience seeing nature slowly reabsorbing what was once a large town. It was also interesting chatting with some of the remaining population, ie biologists studying the long term effects of a massive radiation leak. It's a very real SSSI that's allowed theoretical radiation exposure models to be compared with reality.
There's an interview with the general in charge on RT. (Poor guy got the job because he had a PhD.)
He's 85 but says he has to take a lot of meds. With an average male life expectancy of around 60 for the area, perhaps a little radiation is good for you.
(I do remember reading a report years ago, after talking to a scientist from Winfrith, which suggested that Sellafield workers had about average life expectancy. One interesting possibility was that while radiation exposure might increase the risk of leukaemia somewhat, it might be suppressing the initiation of some solid cancers and the two effects roughly cancelled out. But (a) this is not a citation and (b) anyway my recollection may be faulty. I haven't done RP in a quarter of a century).
The link with leukaemia has been debunked, specifically in the case of Sellafield workers. My wife helped administer the big epidemiology study on it and I have partaken of fermented barley with some of those eminent epidemiologists.
The big problem is that the leukaemia risk was invariant to radiation exposure or type or lack thereof in workers (office types). The conclusion was that the gathering together of people from lots of different places in a new place mixed a lot of viruses together, some of which raised the risk.
The big problem is that the leukaemia risk was invariant to radiation exposure or type or lack thereof in workers (office types). The conclusion was that the gathering together of people from lots of different places in a new place mixed a lot of viruses together, some of which raised the risk.
Ah, the joy of causation. It was one of the things I chatted about during my visit, ie studying theoretical vs empircal results and theories like radiation hormesis..Especially when there are places with high natural radiation, plus in places like Colorado, additional exposure due to altitude from cosmic rays and SEPs. So not simple, and better perhaps better explained by differences in bioaccumulation and excretion. Kind of summed up by being told 'Don't try eating an apple. This is not the garden of Eden!'. But that was also an area of study, ie instead of strip-mining contaminated topsoil and then dealing with it, trying things like planting fast-growing vegetation like elephant grass and seeing if that would absorb contamination.
I hope any surge in tourism isn't going to mess up any research though.
Hmm.. scope for a new RI? The high energy particles are sometimes converted to "a baseball travelling at X" equivalent. So maybe a conversion from GeV to linguine, or a standardised swallow or coconut? All of which would make a bigger hole than an SEP.
HZE ions are also fun, especially as they can be carbon. Perhaps this is how other species solved their carbon reduction challenges? CCS, then load into your particle accelerator, and fire.. We do that with depleted uranium after all.
I'm all for mocking the Instagramites and influencers. But the thing I don't get, or go along with, is this complaining about people dressing up - as if it's some deeply disturbing social statement.
People cosplay as vikings (remember all that raping and pillaging?), and do re-enactments - though hopefully only of the battles and the post battle drinking sessions, not the rest of it. People dress as storm troopers and Darth Vader - which by the way is also a dystopian sci-fi story, just not written by as credible an author...
I got quite annoyed by all that hysterical shit about Prince Harry "dressing as a Nazi", i.e. going to a fancy dress party in a german uniform (I'm assuming SS from the outrage but never cared to check) - so I suppose I should also be annoyed on behalf of some Instagrammer I've never heard of too.
Otherwise we need to ban about a quarter of cinema, a good chunk of literature and quite a lot of music. And large amounts of fancy dress and cosplay - I mean dressing children as witches is surely going to encourage them to discrimate against lonely old women and possibly even burn them!
In the immortal words of a colleague of mine, "fuck that shit!" Otherwise there are surely enough of us offended by all the faux outrage that we can get the Guardian banned for peddling it.
I vaguely remember the prince was dressed as Afrika Korps. Not that the average clickbait outraged journalist either from the Sun, Guardian or Cracked could tell the difference.
'They're all Germans, ain't they ? Bloody krauts.'
.
Also remember at the time, the noisome and smug Private Eye pointed out that in a few earlier months, prominent journos, including some from the unspeakable Daily Mail, then burbling in anger as always, had attended Xmas parties as Nazis.
A mingling of awful Parties.
That is true, we used to take the spawn to re-enactments when they were young and I remember a WWII one with Allies and Wermacht though they were definitely Wermacht, I did not see any death's heads or SS uniforms. We saw everything from ancient Britons vs Romans to WWII via medieval, ECW and Napoleonic. We got charged by a small squadron of dragoons, the earth shook and it was very instructive of what it would have taken to stand against them, even in square.
We got charged by a small squadron of dragoons
Lancers would have been worse - the psycological aspect of 1/2 tonne of horse charging at you at 30mph with a vary sharp metal pointy bit in front can't be underestimated.
Which is why the PBI[1] in Napoleonic times spent so much time in training on how to form and hold a square[2]. Because if the square broke then you *all* died[3].
[1] Poor bloody infantry. As coined by the cavalry types who all tended to be la-di-dah rich boys.
[2] Just as it sounds - the unit is formed into a hollow square with the wounded and officers in the hollow centre and all the others in several lines, facing outwards. With bayonets fixed and most horses are noticably averse to charging straight onto the pointy bits. And, once the bayonets were properly developed, the muskets would still fire so the incoming cavalry had to face lead shot coming at them as well. Then the cavalry developed horse artillary which was simply unfair since infantry squares were very vulnerable to cannon fire..
[3] If a square broke then most of the fleeing infantry would die from attacks from behind. Even a tired horse can run faster than a human and the cavalry all tended to have curved swords that they could swipe with. The curve meant that they were less likely to get stuck in bone.
Slightly continuing the off-topic - this stopped being important with the development of breech loaders. The phrase "thin red line" comes from the Crimean War when a battalion of Highlanders (with red jackets, hence the "red: line) defeated a charge on them by cavalry by forming a line and firing rapidly enough (and probably accurately enough as well - the breech loaders were rifled unlike smooth-bore muskets) to stop the charge. Prior to the use of their cartridge based breech loaders the Highlanders would have had to have gone into a square to fend off cavalry.
The second really important change introduced by breech loading was that it was no longer necessary to be standing in order to reload. Muzzle-loading more or less required the weapon to be held vertically in order to pour the powder down the barrel though the loading and ramming of the ball could be carried out prone or nearly so. So unless in a fixed position behind an obstacle, troops armed with muzzle loaders had to stand in order to fire more than once.
And it wasn't just horse artillery, any artillery with the range was very destructive when used on squares although cannon were not a lot more accurate than muskets so many balls fired even at quite close range could miss. Also even infantry fire from a line could threaten squares as they had only a quarter the fire power of a line composed of an equal number. Then, as now, combined arms attacks were the most effective tactic when they could be organized.
At Waterloo, the French cavalry sacrificed itself to force the British infantry into squares, but none of the French commanders send infantry to support the cavalry, and the mass of cavalry prevented their artillery from attacking the squares. If the last, final advance, by the Guard on their own had been done in partnership with the earlier cavalry attacks the outcome of the battle might have been different.
/OT rant
People cosplay as vikings (remember all that raping and pillaging?), and do re-enactments - though hopefully only of the battles and the post battle drinking sessions, not the rest of it. ..... I ain't Spartacus
That is a Vain Hope, I ain't Spartacus. The REST of IT is Just So Almighty Appealing.
One of those Temptations for a Saint Anthony to Satisfy for the Quenching of Desires with Lusts :-) .... And most certainly in Live Operational Virtual Environments, Almighty Heavenly Journeys to Follow and Virtually Realise with Practical Creation of Future Environments Endowed with CyberIntelAIgent Master Key Control in Command on Virtual Space Flight Decks ........... with Everything in Play to Play For.
That's Real Hard Core Virtual Porn right there? Designed to deprave and corrupt?
How about EMPower ‽ .
When you're handsomely paid for doing nothing, and your people died to ensure your family could keep on being handsomely paid for doing nothing for centuries to come just for birth right, you have to SHOW RESPECT for those who dies. Dressing as the people who killed them for fun show no respect.
A small point, but the Windsors have German ancestry (Battenberg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.) Indeed at one time England and Hannover had the same king.
The Afrika Korps were a pretty good lot as the Wehrmacht went. When von Thoma decided the war was lost and Hitler was mad, he simply went and surrendered to the British Army because he disapproved of killing civilians.
An American officer wrote that he was somewhat shocked to discover that, rather than a life or death struggle against Fascism,British cavalry officers regarded that part of the war as "just another series of battles to add to the regimental history, against a reasonably sporting opponent."
And if you still cling to the view that "all Germans in the War were Nazis and evil", I highly recommend the book "A Higher Call" by Adam Makos (here's a preview link on Amazon, if their evil link-share thing works as I hope it does)
It's a fascinating (true) tale of how a Luftwaffe pilot escorted a badly damaged B-17 bomber out of German airspace to safety, and goes into some detail about the mutual respect between the Luftwaffe and their opponents. It will open your eyes to a very different perspective.
Having seen the story about the B-17 a few times, from memory the only reason the Luftwaffe pilot didn't shoot them down was because he was out of ammo.
However a very good friend of ours had a photo of a german soldier in their house, and when I asked about it, was told that it was her father who served in the Wehmacht and now lived in Australia. Yes there were many nasty "Nazis" but the majority of soldiers were either conscripts or not willing to sell their souls for the Fatherland.
And so? They've been very lucky. They got a kingdom for lack of other heirs. For a long time they weren't seen well. They had to win respect from Britons.
People died to defend that kingdom. You are just a useless symbol, at least show respect and don't show you're a idiot who can't care less about your people, your country history, and just want to have fun.
Afrika Korps fought under the Nazi flag and for the Reich, and if they had won, believe me, they would have not been so nice. Sure, when the war was lost they surrendered, but why they didn't stop Hitler before? Some SS were enough to control them all? No. Most of them believed in Hitler.
War in the desert, like war at sea, could look different, no Jews to hunt and exterminate. It's just look different.
Be glad Harry's models didn't win.
Short answer is that Hitler took extreme precautions against either a coup or assassination, because he knew a lot of Germans would like to dispose of him.
Conspirators were unlucky - bombs that failed to explode or exploded in the wrong place - but there were people like Canaris who were working against him before Germany started to lose the war.
And you have no right to lecture me on patriotism. Your second paragraph is simply insulting. It seems that for some people, anyone who has made an effort to understand the period around and during WW2 and who has consulted German as well as British sources is "useless" or "an idiot". Typical yah-boo-sucks that is at the root of part of our current political dysfunction. You, Sir or Madam, should get off your high horse.
Bullshit. Sure, a few would have liked to kill him. It happens to less dangerous people as well. And all attempts failed exactly because Hitler had much more support than the few who tried to kill him.
Most German truly believed in Hitler and Nazism - for many reasons - from idealism to greed - but Hitler didn't control Germany with Gestapo and SS only. You don't build such a dictatorship and launch a world war without deep support from your country.
Sure, some when they understood German would have been utterly destroyed changed their minds - and tried to save their butts also. Sure, not everybody was a truly evil assassin, but they all were accomplices in one of the most evil period in mankind history. It really didn't matter if you were sent to Afrika Korps or to gather Jews in Poland, Nehterlands and other nations - you were fighting for Nazism anyway.
Not all Allied soldiers were good people as well - but they didn't fight to establish a rule of terror.
And if you can't understand that when you represent your nation - and you exist only for that reason, after all - you have not the freedom to act like the average idiot, well, it explains a lot why we have people like Trump and Boris Johnson around, and all those "very fine people". And I'm now really worried history didn't teach anything, and we risk to fall back into the same nightmare.
Most German truly believed in Hitler and Nazism
I presume that you have cites to back this.
You don't build such a dictatorship and launch a world war without deep support from your country
The current state of the US argues against this.
Hitler took extreme precautions against either a coup or assassination
And (apparently) couldn't understand whay the British were fighting against him since (in his perverted ideology) that were fellow Germanics and thus of the "master race".
people like Canaris who were working against him
There were also quite a few Germans that ended up dead in concentration camps because they disagreed with the Nazi ideology. Hitler came about (in large part) because of the French demands as part of the treaty that ended WW1 and bankrupted Germany. Even the politicians at the time realised this and cautioned against some of the provisions.
LDS,
For fuck's sake, the man wore a costume to a fucking fancy dress party! He's nothing to do with the history of the monarchy in this country and little to do with the future of it either. He was (at the time) the spare to the heir to the heir. Now he's the heir to the spare to the heir of the heir to the heir.
He has done other things, as well as going to a fancy dress party. Including fighting in the army, as a forward air controller - which is not a job given out lightly given the opportunities to fuck up and get your entire unit killed.
Also military people tend to have a very robust sense of humour. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth after Germany sent troops to Afghanistan (against much traditional opposition) and those troops were photographed by the press with t-shirts they'd had printed that read: I got further East than Grandad.
Whether you find that in poor taste or very funny is a matter of opinion. I suppose it could be both... I remember laughing a lot when I read about it.
Well, I find it funny, and if Hitler had invaded Britain the best a number of my family could have hoped for was yellow stars.
The thing was, in the 1930s both the Soviet Union and Germany were dictatorships run by extremely cunning madmen. Hitler's mistake was deciding he needed the arms making resources of Czechoslovakia and the fields of Poland before invading the USSR. Without that the West might have looked on as two equally unsavoury governments fought one another. The grandfather who invaded Russia might have been some ghastly SS thug -but was probably just a poor squaddie expected to fend for himself at -40 degrees (F or C, makes no odds).
I find it best on the whole to avoid either making people prisoners of their history or otherwise stereotyping them.
Anyone wondering about my nick will know that Tolstoy's book is Voyna i mir, War and Peace. But I took mine from Pushkin's alternative. Voyna i mor means War and plague. That's pretty much the history of Russia.
I find it best on the whole to avoid either making people prisoners of their history or otherwise stereotyping them.
As the old saying goes, those that ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Or sometimes try and ignore it. Like Ukraine's far-right problems, which may have influenced the Chernobyl show if they were relying on Ukraine's co-operation given I think it's still illegal in Ukraine to show Russia in a positive light. And it's also currently fashionable to demonise Russia, so it's all good. Or as the interview with the Russian General showed, just exagerated for dramatic effect. Naked, sweaty miners being one example, but presumably producer's choice.
German (and Russian) history during Hitler & Stalin's time being important parts of the whole 'never forget' thing.. Like the rivalry/animosity between the professional and traditional Wermacht and the NSDAP's goon squads. Or how the NSDAP resolved internal differences, ie the Night of the Long Knives where the SA were elimated. Or how the SS morphed from being a bunch of thugs & prison guards detaining undesirables 'for their own protection' into having it's own tank regiments, and priority over Wermacht units.. Which is another of those odd historical parallels, ie Ukraine's 'militias' being folded into Ukraine's official military.
Or the old adage about not interfering when your enemy's making mistakes. The allies were helped by Hitler and his cronies ignoring advice from more professional & experienced commanders.. But hindered by Stalin's Great Purge of his officers & NCOs. Replacing competent commanders with more politically reliable ones wasn't the greatest strategic decision. Or smaller decisions, like the sad tale around Oskar Dirlewanger. Having a bunch of poachers-turned-jaeger troops might have seemed like a good idea, but not when it was commanded by Dirlewanger, who met and exceeded any definition of 'evil'.. Given the Wola Massacre though, explains why Poland isn't too keen on Ukraine's paramilitaries who regard Dirlewanger and other Nazis as 'heroes'. Politics is strange like that, as is figuring out why Dirlewanger's boss wasn't executed for obvious war crimes.
But such is history.. It's written by the victors, and re-imagined to ignore the heroism and sacrifices made by the people involved in dealing with the Chernobyl disaster. Interesting times for Ukraine's new President though.
Hitler had invaded Britain the best a number of my family could have hoped for was yellow stars
Mine would have got a swift bullet to the back of the head - being a conscientious objector[1] (as well as being a non-conforming member of a protestent body) was not an approved lifestyle.
[1] Most of my grandfathers family did prison time for refusing to fight. And it wasn't a pleasant time. My uncle ended up down a coal mine (and getting the Black Lung that eventually killed him) as the result of refusing to fight.
Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin might change your mind about those "poor squaddies".
Did mine. I take tales of the Gentlemanly Wehrmacht As Opposed To The SS Scum with a pinch of salt after reading them at the end of the last and the turn of the new centuries.
Hee hee. Love being able to say "A century ago, we used to etc etc"
Wait. No, I hate that.
Where's my dinner?
Sure, life is all about fun, isn't it? No one should bear any responsibility for anything, right? The dream of everybody is being rich because other people pay for your expensive life, and you won't give a fuck about them, all that matters is your ego and just having fun, right? The only problem are the "unelected" bureaucrat of Brussels, right? The problem are the "elites" - but some elites are OK, even when the poke their dirty fingers into your eyes, right, and laugh about you because they can do everything and still find people that defend them.... hey, their are above you, why they think about being responsible?
About his stint in the army - usual well choreographed propaganda,They need some smoke in your eyes to keep you believing you need them...
While it's in the army you now find a lot of people who like the worst of the XX century - a professional army inevitably attracts a given type of people.
It doesn't make me feel well.
Senior civil servants in Brussels have a lot more power over your life than does Prince Harry. As do local councillors or civil servants in London for that matter. The Queen has almost no power, and anyone not heir to the throne as near to none as makes no difference. Being a celeb gives you a bit of influence - someothing for example he uses for service charities and his mother's old landmines and AIDS campaigns - but I wouldn't go so far as to describe that as power.
The royals aren't funded by taxpayers either.
Interestingly a new person has joined our company. I approved of her highly on day one, as she told me taht she hated Facebook and all its works, and had given up her account - because it was all about making people miserable.
But then on day 2, I was sad, as she told me about this famous (not to me though) Instagrammer she follows. I think she's a wellbeing blogger. Which seems to involve lots of stuff about how great her life is and how shit yours is. And everything you like is awful. One morning's post was something like bacon is as addictive as crack. And there's all sorts of cod-science claims on there, like reboiling the water in a kettle is bad for you. And bacon is bad for you. Lies! Lies, I tell you! But the usual crap about if you feel you're getting a cold take echinacia and that'll cure you and diet fads and the like. All terribly depressing.
One friend told me confidently that my sources were rubbish, when I was pointing out to her the dangers of not taking the MMR vaccine. My go-to source on measles symptoms being the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta - given I wanted to Google a credible source to give actual stats, without having to do much checking. Fuck me! Her source was less credible than the Daily Mail! That fucker Wakefield has a lot to answer for! As do the wankers in the press who went along with him for so long.
I seem to remember someone wrote that the most Daily Mail headline you can imagine is "Last week's superfood that you must eat causes cancer."
Nah. Nowhere near.
"Last week's superfood that you must eat causes cancer, immigration and house prices."
(Edit: Damn, beaten to it!)
As a Bioscientist I know that the bacon thing (all fried/roasted cured meats) has not been shown to be causative and it still remains true that the biggest consumers of them almost all have lots of other unhealthy habits and bodies the proposed mechanism is scientifically plausible. So caution in terms of limiting your exposure is warranted. The substance in question is nitrosamines if you want to look it up.
I make my own gluten free sausages and do sometimes put a cure on the meat. But the meat in a sausage should not be browned in the pan, the skin will be. So I struggle to see the link, unless you cook skinless snags in the frypan.
Note this is a separate issue to the general one of browning carbs in fat which purportedly produces acrylamides. Though with all these things the operative thing is dose and not al acrylamides are created equal in terms of toxicity. I have used them in the lab to cast gels but not for all that long or very recently (the technology has moved on, nobody casts dna sequencing gels any more).
But PAGE was a rite of passage for undergrad biosciences!
Having to remind the poor stupid darlings not to keep prodding the nice squidgy gel with a bare finger because it was still laced with un polymerised cumulative neurotoxin...
Was more fun doing large 2D SDS-PAGE protein separations because we'd wash the gel plates in hot water and detergent then, while still hot, rinse them down with ethanol. Wouldn't actually cast the gel until the next day so we had time to sober up again. 2D-LC makes the proteins far more recoverable but it takes the fun out of things a bit.
"And bacon is bad for you."
Has to be, nothing can taste that good and be healthy :D
"the dangers of not taking the MMR vaccine."
I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but there are plenty of reasons to be a tad suspicious of the MMR vaccine.
The measles vaccine is AMAZING. Saves lives, everyone should have it, possibly the most important public health intervention we have. The mumps and rubella vaccines are much less effective, and can potentially lead to adulthood complications.
If you are around animals a lot (farm kid etc) then you don't need MMR, just the measles jab. In fact, many of our "industrial" diseases are because we stopped living around animals.
The problem, in some ways, is that the measles vaccine has worked, and it's been largely eradicated. So the current "crunchy" types have not had older relatives who had been killed or crippled by the disease. Hence why the only vaccine my crunchy mother in law had her kids get was measles, and raising them on a farm :)
"But the usual crap about if you feel you're getting a cold take echinacia and that'll cure you"
My usual response to such claims is that I cure my colds by masturbating with the other hand until symptoms clear. Works 100% of the time :D
"If you are around animals a lot (farm kid etc) then you don't need MMR, just the measles jab. In fact, many of our "industrial" diseases are because we stopped living around animals."
Cowpox exposure may have helped reduced the seriousness of Smallpox, but was not itself trivial. People did die of it.
Jenner's ideas let people have the benefit of cowpox without the infection being serious.
With regard to other conditions like Rubella, Mumps and Measles, I have yet to hear of that, so would appreciate being pointed to corroborated, peer-reviewed information.
Sounds more like a confusion of history and myths here.
Interestingly a new person has joined our company... she told me taht she hated Facebook and all its works, and had given up her account - because it was all about making people miserable....as she told me about this famous (not to me though) Instagrammer she follows.
I do hope you reminded her that Facebook and Instagram are two arms of the same body.
"One morning's post was something like bacon is as addictive as crack"
I reject that statement, sir! Bacon is certainly more addictive :)
" the usual crap about if you feel you're getting a cold take echinacia and that'll cure you"
I'm not even sure I know what echinacia is, but when I feel I'm feeling flu-like I take a panadol or two and a hot tea and pop off to bed as a pre-emptive strike. Best thing with virus is to let the immune system do it's thing and let it run it's course as quickly as possible.
Best thing with virus is to let the immune system do it's thing
Until I started taking immuno-suppressors[1] my colds only ever really lasted a day or so and flu lasted less time than average. Since I've been taking them I have to suffer colds and flu normally.
But at least my immune system is (mostly) no longer trying to eat the synovial membranes.
like reboiling the water in a kettle is bad for you
The standard advice for making (proper[1]) tea is that "the water should be freshly boiled (and not boiling) and you mustn't use re-boiled water".
I never understood the last bit - what is lost in the boiling process apart from some water vapour?
[1] Made from tea leaves, not 'floor sweepings in a plastic bag" masquerading as tea.
The large number of idiots you see around you every day.
And they also make more money than most people do performing very useful tasks that actually improves people lives.
Now Google, Facebook & C. reward stupidity because they need more and more idiots to sustain their business.
And they also make more money than most people do performing very useful tasks that actually improves people lives.
Most influencers are simple multi-celled organisms that feed on oxygen and bandwidth and excrete soft-focus images.
Nick Clegg
His main problem (and hence the Liberal Democrats's problem) was that he didn't realise that getting into the bed with the Tories meant that they would get blamed for everything the Tories did.
The Tories must have found it like taking sweets from a small kid.
I can say for certain that they influence me: Whenever some vapid waste of carbon calls themselves "influencers", I automatically stop hearing what they have to say, and look the other way...
I guess I've moved on in life to that 'old age and treachery' phase. But got me thinking about ways to exploit 'influencers' for fun and profit..
So it's based on an age-old tradition of flogging relics. What better way to remember your visit than buying a piece of Chernobyl? Add it to your chunk of genuine Berlin Wall*, and show all your friends! I mean subscribers!
Then, come to a suitable arrangement with the exclusion zone and airport security so that when the souvenir sets off radiation detectors, the influencer can be charged a suitably large fine, decontamination** costs, and secure, expert transportation of the souvenir back into inventory!
Which has been a problem in and around the exclusion zone, ie stopping people stealing scrap. Or entire vehicles. Like fire engines & construction gear previously used in and around the reactor core, thus heavily contaminated.
* Currently out of stock, but coming soon once the concrete's set and grafitti applied.
** Think fire hose meets nekkid influencer. Should cost very little to promote given influencers come with their own audience included! Contact us for licencsing and revenue sharing opportunities!
Hopefully they are influencing each other to get into the Ark Fleet Ship B ASAP to avoid the impending global climate emergency. I mean the "B" Ark is the coolest one right?
I'm not denying any climate emergency, I'm just hoping some good can come of it...
Also, let's not crash it into Earth.
Recently one of these influencers (a term which is becoming synonymous with "freeloader") contacted a hotel in Ireland requesting free accommodation in return for them mentioning the hotel on Instagram. The hotel, basically replied "feck off - if you want to stay here, you pay your way like everyone else, and that way we can afford to pay our staff". Cue an outpouring of entitlement-fueled rage from the influencer, which triggered an absolutely awesome response from the hotel via YouTube.
Wish I had a link to it right now, but I'm at work and the Internet Fun Police forbid me to go looking for it. Search YouTube for something like "irish hotel influencer" and you should find the thing I'm talking about. It's comedy gold.
They influence people with no aspirations, people that want to be better, people that don't want to be bored with the drudgery of life. These people don't and never will understand that they are looking in the wrong places but that's how they have been brought up on a diet of television and internet.
The true answer is from within not some clown drinking a coffee on a beach in a leotard while making duck impressions and using a snap chat filter to make their arses look like a beach ball.
I hate to point out to you and all other haters (including myself), that they're not supposed to be influencing. They ARE influencing millions (many) of people. We might laugh and have a little feel-good session here "from the balcony", but those millions are not listening the the old farts who after all do what the oldies do, fart. I see a confirmation of my abovementioned wisdom in the eyes of my teenage daughter whom, regardless of all those years I've done my best to raise her into a proper (propa) human, takes the wisdom about life, universe and everything from the type of people mentioned in the text. I say, there's no future for the humankind, because all her friends do the same.
p.s. if you send the current influencers to Charnobyl, they'll be immediately replaced by 2nd rank, and then 3rd, etc. who can't wait to be 1st rank. It's like politicians, you think the worst one steps down, and then you have a contest and all 10 seem even worse...Where do they all come from? :(
Very close to the reactor. Inside the reactor, if possible. Tell them that turning glowing green is fashionable. And hot red makes them hot. And that they are turning into superheros with perfect bodies and marvelous powers.
Then pour as much concrete as possible over the whole lot.
You might be surprised at how safe swimming in a spent fuel pond would be, if it weren't for the bullets:
Coal power kills and has killed way more people than nuclear. It also releases more radiation than nuclear power. And that's ignoring the climate change issues that are causing us to close down coal fired plants. If climate change starts killing millions, that'll be down to previously burnt coal, not the nuclear industry - so the clean-up costs are probably worse too.
Gas is better than coal on pretty much all counts - but still has climate change implications. I think oil would come between the two. As far as electricity base load, that leaves nuclear and hydro, which both have their own problems and limitations
Currently we do not have an ideal base load generation technology. Nuclear is one of the better options, and might be better still if we did more work on thorium. Otherwise we can always hope for fusion or a breakthrough in storage or carbon capture.
@IaS. Your post suggests an alternative energy source derived from influencers, sell them on the idea of running in a giant hamster wheel with a dynamo attached for several hours a day to benefit their health/looks/ IQ or whatever, if their huge numbers of followers do the same, useful energy may be produced and they will be too out of breath to expound as much shit as usual.
Note: various forms of encouragement are available.
Do you drive? Then you are complicit in mass murder and potential murder.
Every trip is potentially fatal for someone.
WHO estimates 1.35 million deaths worldwide from RTA's in 2016. In ONE year.
Clearly the only way to get that number to zero is to ban driving, for cars, trucks and yes buses since they kill too, and fall down ravines when they get tired. Yes its a small few who cause the problem but sorry only a ban will stop the carnage. Its for the best and of course thinking of the children and the unborn children of the dead and their unborn......
Unless you think the risk is acceptable?
"Potentially fatal"...
And I'm potentially somewhere between serial killer and suicidal. Either way, someone could potentially die of unnatural causes. Better lock me up for everyone's good. Or for my own good, remove all possibilities of self-harm, disease, or accidents and kill me now.
Now scale up to societal level with help of AI and we're all doomed. For our own good, of course.
"Do you drive? Then you are complicit in mass murder and potential murder.
Every trip is potentially fatal for someone.
WHO estimates 1.35 million deaths worldwide from RTA's in 2016. In ONE year."
Well, conservatively estimating that 1/7th of the world's population drives I guess that means I'm directly responsible for about 0.00135 deaths per year driven, or around 0.03375 deaths....
...oh, wait, no that's not how that works
I know I shouldn't have been, and I know that this is probably a marker of my passage from late-late-late middle age into solid geezerhood, but I was literally agape at the revelation that there were people on the planet, American people, born in the land where this story played big (though not big enough it turned out) on scant information at the time it all went down, people who did not know anything about Chernobyl.
A whole generation of people who go "say whaaat?" when it is pointed out on Twitter that "That HBO show - it's a real thing that happened in Russia!"
Next up: The Great Tweet Awakenings when we get HBO's "3 Mile Island" and "Love Canal" miniseries.
Mark Kermode says that he went to see Apollo 13 with Radio 1's other film reviewer, as in one aged more in line with their demographic, him and Mayo being the very old hangers-on soon to be dispatched to Radio 5. And she said afterwards how exciting the film was, and how she was always in suspense about how it was going to end...
I had a conversation with someone in about 2005. She's not well educated, but not stupid. But definitely very busy, 2 jobs and 2 kids in their later teens at the time. I think non-work time would not have been wasted on such petty fripperies as the news.
Anyway the subject turned to the mighty Tony Blair for some reason or other (the election?). And she said, "but isn't he unpopular because of that foreign story a few years ago?"
Me, wonders what she's on about and tries a wild guess, "What you mean the war in Iraq?"
"Oh yes, that was it." She said.
Every time I read about the internal dissent within the Labour Party, and see/hear some Corbyn fan spitting about the evils of Blair, I always remember that conversation. Sure Iraq had an impact on Labour's popularity, but not as much as some people might think. It easy for political anoraks to forget how little impact the things we obsess about have on normal voters.
, people who did not know anything about Chernobyl.
Yes indeed. That's the same generation that knows next to nothing of the WWI and WWII and tend to ignore the "Danger!" signs dealing with unexploded ordinance.. Probably the same ones that climb large TV/Radio antennas and go up on tall buildings and run around the roofs and jump from building to building. Ignorance is just a tool to cleanse the gene pool.
Casual conversation with a work colleague a few years back, it emerged that he had no knowledge about Japan and China beyond the names themselves, and that they were full of asians. Wouldnt be able to tell which was which.
Thinking about it, he and many others would be just as appalled at my willful ignorance of sporting teams - possibly which ones are full of asians...
For those unaware, Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel is set in a United States run by Christian fundamentalists who enslave the few remaining fertile women and turn them into baby factories for the regime's inner circle. It's horrible.
So, natch,
One slip of the keyboard, one more character and you would have been off to quite another controversy. Cutting it close, very close :)
Here's a hint:
Baroness James, FRSA, FRSL
Sir Terence Pratchett OBE
Dame Mary Cartland
The British honours system doesn't always get it right, but it's a much better guide than the Booker Prize. (I suspect if Terry Pratchett had been less witty about establishments he might have made baron, but still)
'oh no, a writer has written one bad book so they're a hack'
I haven't read Alias Grace, but I have read other Atwood books. Whilst I would personally opine that her output is variable, she's a long way from being a hack.
I would rather read Sarah Waters, though.
"... then this problem should take care of itself in due time."
But our time is precious, we need a solution now now NOW!!!
"And this is the start of the 'Elephants foot' tour, please form an orderly queue to pose next to it. It's very popular right now. Why am I standing so far away from it? Why because it's so popular of course..."
Think of this as just Darwin in action.....if they spend enough time there then they'll just quietly fade away.....
As for the whole cult of the 'influencer' is really just Marketing speaking unto Marketing. Marketing groups in companies tend to swipe a lot of the budget because they're Really Important People and they use that budget to generate a sort of faux universe. This universe interacts with other faux universes leading to an entirely alternate reality where -- apparently -- ordinary people are supposed to follow trends and buy stuff. Some do, of course, but most of us ignore it -- its like filling up webpages with annoying and irrelevant pop up ads -- someone's paying someone for them because they think they work.
"For those unaware, Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel is set in a United States run by Christian fundamentalists who enslave the few remaining fertile women and turn them into baby factories for the regime's inner circle. It's horrible."
There *is* a culture that *somewhat* resembles this dystopian novel.
It isn't a culture that has ever held sway in the United States though. (Not that this stops people from wanting to import more and more of it.) And it isn't "Christian fundamentalists" ...
Atwood based the events in her novel on things that have all happened at some point somewhere, they aren't all based on things happening in a single place, ar at a single time. Everyone thinks, "it couldn't happen here," right up to the point at which it does. The novel (and the series loosely based on it) are an exploration of those things happening in the context of right-wing Christian fundamentalism, as that was, at the time (and it seems moreso now) the way in which it could happen in the US.
You don't really have to look too hard to find analogues of the Revolutionary Guard in US politics today (or British or European politics for that matter).
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." - John Curran, 1790
"as that was, at the time (and it seems moreso now) the way in which it could happen in the US."
You really think that "right-wing Christian fundamentalism"... and "moreso now" (?!) ... is more likely to impose anti-woman totalitarianism on the US than the culture that *actually* covers women head to toe, deprives them of rights and "agency", has child brides, sets up exploitation networks, etc. everywhere it goes?
It's as though someone had read her novel and said "wait, I know where we can get some people who are actually like that!"
I dunno, it just fascinates me that because of our taboo against seeing anything negative in the foreign and exotic, that everyone still fears their familiar old local caricatures (of people they don't like) instead of the real deal appearing right in front of their face.
...downvote me all you like, it doesn't change the fact that terms like "delusional", "SJW", "snowflake", "political correctness gone mad", et al are increasingly used in place of an actual argument in order to close down criticism of one's own viewpoint. If that criticism isn't valid, or is an overreaction, your argument should relfect that and be able to stand on its own merits.
Personally, I couldn't care less whether some "slebrity" dresses up as a rape victim and posts it on social media, because there's zero possibility of me seeing it and / or caring about the sleb in question. However, if you don't see how doing so could be considered to be tasteless to, for instance, rape survivors, survivors of modern slavery, or indeed those who managed to escape the Iranian revolution, whose plight Atwood's novel analogues, then you are both stupid and insensitive.
So in short, when someone uses terms like "delusional SJW", I see someone who is lacking empathy for the plight of others, and is responsible, in their own small way, for making this planet a slightly more unpleasant place. And lets face it, it's already got its quota of arseholes, so try not to be one another one.
Sorry, I'm with Tuesday Is Soylent Green Day on this one. You need to see the difference between fantasy and fiction. Otherwise, are we going to start banning people doing cosplay when they are dressed as bad guys i.e Darth Vader and Stormtroopers, aka Nazis in space who murder millions/billions? Yes, get outraged over real events, not fictional ones.
Also, you are trying to shut down 'Tuesday Is Soylent Green Day''s opinion. They have every right to take the piss if they want to, especially when the person publicly published their opinion.
It's a subtle distinction, but one I think that does exist, between re-enactment, and cosplay, and dressing up like (albeit fictional) characters that are based clearly on real people who have had horrible things done to them, and glorifying it. You may, or may not, agree with others about whether this sort of thing is generally acceptable behaviour (it is a morality / ethics issue after all, which are notoriously fuzzy).
However, my point isn't that everyone should be offended by this, it's that name-calling others that don't agree with you to shut them down is just shitty. By using terms like 'SJW' in a perjorative sense, it is shutting down discourse. It is saying, "if you don't agree with me, I won't even listen to your viewpoint, you are wrong," which is about as boorish as you can get.
And just one final point: I can't say I'm particularly outraged by the actions of the sleb in question. To be honest, I'm more saddened by the fact that Margaret Atwood's subtle, thought-provoking and ground-breaking novel has been reduced to the status of "look at me, I'm dressed like someone on that there TV program" by some vacuous self-aggrandising arse-biscuit, who probably isn't even capable of understanding that she is missing the point of the character she is emulating so widely, she may as well be one of those Star-Wars stormtroopers trying to shoot a fleeing Leia Organa in a 20-foot corridor...
I started watching Chernobyl, then had to stop as it was so funny it was sad.
Ok the acting was fine and the fantastical story seemed ok and was on par with the NIght King being able to raise hoards of dead people using magic in GOT which was effing creepy.
But I had to stop watching as I found it hard to keep a straight face whenever someone on screen tried to science when talking about the lava and nuclear death. As entertainment it was fine but as a supporter of nuclear energy I tend to get a bit annoyed when people are shown scifi fantasy bunk knowing that they will think its real and that nuclear reactors are horrible dangerous bombs even though thats totally impossible.
Fake science plagues real people all the time on kickstarter, who get cheated out of their money for a self filling water bottle, that turned out to be a re-invention of a dehumidifier, that was never delivered and never worked. Or the water seeker, another re-invention of the dehumidifier that simply would fail to work due to the annoying thing called science, specifically the laws of thermodynamics.
We really need more honest programmes to go alongside the entertaining ones to help offset the lack of general knowledge of real science as its real science that will save us all, not some scifi fantasy that is only good for entertainment but will be seen by many as "real".
I wonder how many people thought that the movie "2012" was based on real science and that the Mayans predicted it. I remember once being told that in the early 2000's all the other planets would line up on the opposite side of the sun to us and Earth would be subject to earthqakes and storms and death due to the increased gravity. The planets did line up, that was true and accurate, but what happened? I think the tides may have been a little stronger, just a little.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA
they're crawling over each to snap the perfect arse shot in the Ukrainian nuclear wasteland.
No just no.
How can such "influencers" be so oblivious to the tragedy that took so many lives and continues to do so. I think they are very much aware but simply don't care.
Absolutely disgusting lack of respect.
Upper estimates peg the death toll at almost 100,000 as an indirect result of the disaster.
Gotta lurve those estimates.
Actual death toll less than 100.
You really think 100k deaths would not show up in statistical analysis, even in the former soviet union?
These specious estimates are based on a scientifically discredited formula, that was only ever a conservative guide to setting up nuclear regulations. The LNT model of damage from chronic low level radiation.
It behoves the Register to be more scientific and less gullible when promoting stories.
LNT basis its predictions on the false assumption that the chance of developing cancers from low level radiation is linearly proportional to the total lifetime dose.
In reality studies show that the chance of developing cancer is related to the peak single exposure.
Like digital transmissions nothing much happens until you get a very high level of noise. Error correction in DNA has evolved to take care of low level natural radiation.
So next time you hear 'there is no safe limit for radiation exposure' or 'the governments own safety standards indicate that' or 'Fukushima disaster' remind yourself that the actual facts are somewhat different.
The worst conceivable nuclear accident in the world happened at Chernobyl.
And less than 100 people died from it.
Or will die from it.
The lessons of Chernobyl are three fold
- that nuclear power is 100-10000 times safer than previously thought
- people believe what they are told in preference to finding out the facts at a ratio similar to the above.
- people with deep pockets are not interested in the public knowing the truth.
Its interesting to note that the other area where propaganda has overtaken and suffocated rational inquiry is also energy related.
Climate change.
Qui Bono?
Has anyone noticed how similar "influencer" is to "influenza"?
IMHO, many of these so-called "influencers" share many of the characteristics of "influenza", excepts that it's easier to get inoculated or vaccinated against 'flu than these other parasites.
ET because I'm not sure that viruses influencers like the Kardashians and their ilk are entirely human.
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