FIFA. Every man and boy in England loves FIFA, except me. I find it totally boring and pointless.

Sort of tangential, but Democritus was right about atoms, but obviously he worked it out in a very different way to how modern scientists did — though we don’t know his exact reasoning.

Even more tangential: Aristotle (and others) were wrong about the four elements making all matter, but they do correspond to the four basic states of matter, which is kind of fun: earth=solid, water=liquid, air=gas, fire=plasma.

This is a fair point, as far as it goes, and I’m happy to accept ‘mass shooters curently engaged in a mass shooting’ as an exception to the rule!

🫡

You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.

People are so convinced that if we’re more cruel to criminals, they’ll stop committing crimes, or if we’re harsher to workers, we’ll work harder, or if you’re tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.

Well, you’ve convinced me! What should I do, o wise one?

Speaking as a guitarist, I have to say guitar is the easiest instrument to pick up and almost immediately make a cool sound with. Also, you can use guitar tab to play songs you’re familiar with. Tabs don’t really show rhythm, unlike sheet music, but are simple to read.

I am actually excited for the Labour programme, though I realise I’m in the minority! The lack of enthusiasm is mainly because people have so little faith things will actually get better and partly because Labour haven’t always been great at communicating why they’ve made (IMO necessary) changes to their policies.

Agree with you about conservatives, but that has always been the problem with conservatism, unfortunately.

Very lame of me, but I’m really looking forward to the Conservatives losing the next British General Election.

Sorry!

In the original cut they did use the Latin alphabet, so this is, incredibly, yet another thing George Lucas did to make the first film retroactively annoying.

I kinda think that if you can imagine a one-line fix to a plot hole, it isn’t really a plot hole.

I remember someone insisting to me that there was this huge plot hole in the film of the Fellowship of the Ring, because Merry and Pippin don’t get told about what Frodo and Sam are actually doing until the Council of Elrond, but still willingly run around risking life and limb to help them. Now, not only is this not a plot hole in itself (I’m pretty sure I’d help anyone fleeing a demonic horseman, just on principle, never mind if that person was my lifelong friend/cousin), it’s also quite obvious that they could have been told everything offscreen. The audience didn’t need to hear all that explanation again, five minutes after we first heard it.

A lot of plot holes people like to complain about are basically of this nature. ‘Can you imagine a fix?’ Yep, easily. ‘Did the audience need to hear it?’ Nope, because I could easily imagine it. ‘Well, there you go, then.’

You’re right and it’s very weird, because it’s not at all interesting to think of films this way. Basically, the form it takes is:

None of this film is real!

But… I knew that already? It’s a film?

Extra weird hang-up to have, because the films have always had English and American accents side-by-side, even though there’s clearly no England or America!

Anyway, it’s really no different to them calling their ships X-wings and Y-wings, even though they don’t use our alphabet.

I think it’s a category error to think of people as having (or having to have) a purpose. We just are.

If you can access her computer, you could mess with the autocorrect settings and replace common phrases with Christmas carols. Like, change her name to ‘Santa Claus’. Or change ‘Kind regards’ (or whatever she signs off emails with) to ‘Jingle bells’, etc.

I didn’t know that about the EU Parliament, very interesting.

Yes, I think there would have to be some kind of threshold. Otherwise I could stand as a candidate, vote for for myself and have a seat in the legislature where I wield my one pathetic vote!

I think for this to be at all practical, there would need to be some sort of minimum threshold and/or maximum number of legislators, yes.

It’s similar but it retains the constituency link, which many people feel is important.

That’s exactly right, thank you.