Zombie

I have no experience of drug use so I cannot begin to understand what you and your body are going through, but know that others on this site care about you and your daily ordeal with drugs. Please keep us updated.

interesting 2018 paper on the chaotic orbit of this ‘sometime minimoon’ https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/473/3/2939/4265379#

codeysworld.com produces a very scary message Forbidden You don't have permission to access this resource. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Surely that’s the nub of this lively discussion and it applies equally to use of the vernacular Barry Hines’s novel, A Kestrel For A Knave, simply would not have worked had it been written in ‘standard English’. He just had to write the dialogue in the dialect of those working class Barnsley mining communities in order to bring to life, on the page, the characters and their living conditions. The book sold well internationally, and I doubt most Americans would have difficulty understanding passages like this: “Billy lay with his back to him, listening. Then he turned his cheek slightly from the pillow. 'Jud?' 'What?' 'Tha'd better get up.' No answer. 'Alarm's gone off tha knows.' 'Think I don't know?' He pulled the blankets tighter and drilled his head into the pillow. They both lay still. 'Jud?' 'What?' 'Tha'll be late.' 'O, shut it.' 'Clock's not fast tha knows.' 'I said SHUT IT.' He swung his fists under the blankets and thumped Billy in the kidneys. 'Gi'o'er! That hurts!' 'Well shut it then.' 'I'll tell my mam on thi.' Jud swung again. Billy scuffled away to the cold at the edge of the bed, sobbing.” Poor Billy. It’s a hard story of a hard life For the same reason, Irvine Welsh wrote most of Trainspotting in the Scottish dialect ‘Scots’ (more than half the chapters are completely in Scots, and 17 are a mix of English and Scots) that outside Scotland can be challenging, but it’s sold more than 1m within the UK and in other countries: "Ah'll huv tae stoap sayin' 'ken' sae much. These dudes might think ah'm a sortay pleb." "The lager's loupin. Seems tae huv gone dead flat, ken. Tastes like fuckin pish." "zit-encrusted squeaky-voiced wankers playing oot a miserable pretension tae the arts" I’m sure there are plenty of examples of state-based American fiction which might be challenging in other states, never mind internationally, but they still sell.

I was never into Playboy too much writing and not enough boys

OMG!

interesting that Michael Cimino (Victor) and George Sear (Benji) decided they didn’t need or want an Intimacy Coordinator

I created a new thread and reported this problem in the ‘Help’ forum (‘Embedded YouTube changed’) last November but at that time no-one else had reported the same problem, so it was suggested it might be a YT playlist issue. It would be good if you could add a comment to that thread (link below) about the YT that displayed on your device (I used the ‘Quote’ button) because there may be an issue with the forum software / YT interface

sorry, I can’t watch films with this trope. I just can’t

‘Intimacy Coordinators’….?

one good thing about being a penguin is they don’t get lumbago er, that’s it…

Every UK citizen is bound by this Act (or Acts) and if you “sign(ed) the Official Secrets Act” back then it may well have been a brief guide to what the Act is about in order to confirm your awareness, as part of your employment contract paperwork. But things were done differently then, and what’s left of “the Post Office” is now just a government owned commercial business providing a counter service (mostly franchised) for parcels / special delivery, with basic banking and other bits and pieces. So the OSA is no more of an issue than it would be for any other public service company employee, and certainly no excuse for not speaking out against the catalogue of egregious crimes that the company senior management seem to have committed. More importantly, the OSA does not protect anyone from disregarding the justice system. As ever the difficulty with any large organisation (and, in this case, the large turnover of directors and CEOs over 25 years) is pinning responsibility onto individual senior managers, but there’s now so much audit trail evidence emerging that it seems very likely that several CEOs, directors and lawyers will be prosecuted for serious crimes including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice (which carries a maximum life sentence) and, if convicted, could get long prison sentences. Those innocent postmasters/mistresses ruined and killed deserve nothing less.

What’s unusual here is the timescale, almost 30 years from the 1995 beta software launch (with the same problems reported almost immediately) until now. And there’s been nearly 15 years regular media reporting since 2009. The problem here wasn’t lack of media attention but people losing the plot - literally - because the story had unravelled so slowly, in dribs and drabs, and over such a long period that no-one could see the whole horrific narrative and get excited by it. Streaming companies might have all the money, but they wouldn’t have made this (expensive 4 hours quality drama and a likely ‘niche’ audience). Fortunately a traditional TV company, ITV, took a gamble and was prepared to take a hit. But they didn’t take a hit, they made one. And we’re still only half way through the story…

good to know that the readership here at GA is interested only in quality scripts acting and production, not intense hot steamy sex scenes with big brawny piping hot sports guys going at it

penguin poo reeks bad real bad

gentle reminder, guys, that this forum is for things around this story that we can discuss such as traditional radio+TV still being very much alive alongside streaming, why we still need live broadcast media, why people blindly trust computer systems when it’s clear things are going wrong - all part of this story, and all uncontroversial

Last week a TV company in Britain broadcast (yeah, aerials ‘n’ stuff) a fact-based drama show over 4 nights called Mr Bates v the Post Office Yesterday (10 Jan 2024), the UK government - because of this TV show - announced it will create new legislation to completely bypass the justice system and cancel the bulk of 983 criminal convictions over a period of 16 years (some convictions have already been overturned including the case featured in the ITV drama) and award up to £600k compensation to each wrongly convicted person. This breaches the normal separation of powers (although, in reality, there must always be some overlap in a functioning democracy) but, under the British constitution, Parliament can do this because it is ‘sovereign’ (in most democratic countries this could not happen, and even if it could it would take a very long time, but because Britain has an “unwritten” constitution it can be done). The new law should be in place this year. So what’s this all about? It’s about the UK Post Office - imposing a flawed computer system called ‘Horizon’, developed by Fujitsu, on all its franchised postmasters/mistress branches - instructing them to leave their terminals switched on at night for ‘maintenance’ - inserting false branch transactions during the night, causing the branch to show a deficit - demanding payment for these ‘missing’ monies and, if refused, forcing ‘interviews‘ without legal representation and then prosecuting (the PO holds these unique powers) - this money was paid into the PO ‘profit and loss’ (initially a ‘suspense account’ - which the PO denied in court) and the PO board and CEO took bonuses from this money - postmasters/mistresses refusing to plead guilty (because they had done nothing wrong) were told they would be sent to prison (many were) and told their branch was the only one to claim a computer malfunction (a blatant lie) to intimidate them into saying they were guilty (many did this) - during the case featured in the ITV drama the PO used ‘expert’ witnesses who gave testimony that was not honest/truthful to undermine the postmasters/mistress claimants - many postmasters/mistresses were ruined and several committed suicide Here’s the story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67932595

just gay culture to fit into - or not

Degree modules are now being offered on more and more aspects of human life (because missed markets = lost 💰💰) But there are still some huge gaps in course curriculums Let’s call them holes waiting to be filled So it’s good to see that sharp-eyed Professor Lando spotted one huge gaping hole needing urgent attention and has completely filled it

so glad uranus’s ring mystery has been solved thanks to some skilled probing

Are you sure you want to go to the toilet?

this happens a lot when I eat out - I might order the seared bear steak 🐻, then change my mind when I see the grilled penguin… 🐧

that’s just 99 miles from me

this deserves in-depth study, because there’s some really old stuff where not only does this trope not exist (excluding prejudice, discrimination or even outright hatred which is OK because these are still very real) but there are great actors and great scripts too, eg - My Beautiful Launderette, 1985 (Daniel Day-Lewis) - Sunday Bloody Sunday, 1971 (Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, also Daniel Day-Lewis again - in his very first movie, as a boy) - The Lost Language of Cranes, 1991 (Brian Cox) ..all worth catching if you can, plus more modern stuff already mentioned here like God’s Own Country

straight romance flicks usually deliver the happy ending, gay movies rarely do. Why is that?