DigitalDilemma

Agree, it’s a bit unfair that people are blaming Labour for trying to sort things out. The mini budget from the previous government a year before is estimated to have cost the UK £30bn alone in two weeks.

Neither. Cinnamon on Debian. Has just enough bling to be pretty and still manages not to be fat, and pretty similar to both your choices.

UK:

• Snowing in some parts of the country. First time this year. Historically we lose our shit when it snows. (England and Wales at least, Scotland are pretty good at dealing with it)
• Farmers upset at a recent budget where they get taxed on death duties above £1m if they didn’t transfer property to their kids early enough. (The French farmers are also protesting, but for different reasons)
• Quite a few small businesses going bankrupt because of the same budget. (Especially motorbike retailers who’ve suffered some other problems)
• Ukraine fired a UK-supplied missile into Russia. We’re kinda worried about repercussions, but why did we give it to the them if it wasn’t meant to be used?
• Sex allegations about Al Fayed, the now deceased boss of Harrods. “As bad as Savile”

Pretty much a normal Wednesday.

The ‘ghost’ of Christmas past.

Be wary of such proof.

As a young kid in the 80s, I went to stay for three days at an adventure centre. One barn was converted to house bunk beds and there were about 20 kids of about 11 years old. Everyone else was there for a week and I joined midway, and found it difficult to integrate.

One kid, the only one who had shown me any welcome, had his woolly hat stolen. Another kid suggested searching everyone’s bags for it. There was general resistance, most kids thought he’d lost it somewhere and that never happened.

When I got home the following day and unpacked, I found the hat in my bag. Someone had planted it there, probably the kid who suggested searching bags. Taught me a lot about people, that did.

I agree. It’s theft.

HR should absolutely get involved because it’s going to really affect the working environment. And if you’re hungry as a result, you’re really not going to be doing your best work.

And more importantly, how do you back up your important stuff?

Twitter’s already served its purpose. People slagging it off because it’s losing money really don’t understand that it won a country.

IKR? This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen on the internet for a long time.

If that horse bolts, she’s not going to have a fun time at all.

At the speed at which government push back the retirement age, I expect something like 70 with 47 worked years by the time I’ll be old enough.

I don’t know which government you mean. Here in the UK it’s gone from 65 to 67 for men and 60 to 67 for women (Sliding scale - currently 66, but 67 when I get there, and further still for younger people), so I guess it’s happening for everyone. I started work at 16, so if I retired at the legal age I’ll have worked for 51 years.

But - that’s just the state pension which is subsistence only. If you’re smart you have a private or work pension alongside it, and you can take that whenever you can afford to, then collect state pension as well when you’re old enough.

We’ve also lost the mandatory retirement age - you can keep working until you drop, if you want to.

Honestly, it scares me a bit. I’ve known men who retired and just… stopped. Sat in their chair, or maybe went for a little shuffling walk. Dead within a few years.

I could probably retire now, finances wise, but I enjoy my job and don’t know what I’d do all day without some structure.

I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it extended from “Ullo my Love”

There’s also “my 'ansome” from woman to man, and “mah bud / buddy” for man-man.

Like most regional English accents, there’s tons of variations in a small geographic area and many unique words and phrases.

Four planets?

Here in Devon, the local phrase from a certain age of woman server is “Hello, my lover”. Catches the odd person out but you’d have to be a dick to kick off about it.

Why Kashmir?

Thanks for the reply - interesting response. I think I might be projecting my own likely response to the plate question, so in hindsight it’s probably not very useful other than identifying we react differently.

An interesting question, thanks for asking it. I’m guessing I’m not the only one thinking about their own behaviour in framing an answer.

Two questions for you:

1. You accidentally drop a plate in the kitchen and it smashes. How do you feel? Are you angry? Frustrated that you’ve behaved less than perfectly?

2. Your friend does the same thing. How do you feel then?

If you’re like me and more likely to be forgiving to them than yourself for what is obviously an accident, why?

Why do you treat yourself harsher than yourself?

For me, it’s because at some level I consider myself better than them so shouldn’t have made such a mistake, even though at other levels, I think almost everyone else is better than me. Looking at my own mind logically for just this scenario, I have to conclude it cannot be trusted on the matter of self image. I think that’s accurate.

And how do you define behaving perfectly? That’s a subjective standard, you cannot achieve it to everyone’s satisfaction. You’ve set yourself up for failure - that doesn’t feel healthy, it feels like a trap set that’s impossible not to walk into. I’m pretty sure nobody trustworthy has ever has a moment of absolute clarity that allows them to answer all these questions satisfactorily - I’m getting old now and as far as I can see, we’re all just trying to figure this stuff out as best we can.

There’s the phrase - be kind to yourself. As I’ve got older, I think that’s more true than ever. I’ve tried to honour it, alongside being kind to others. I don’t always succeed, but I figure that as long as I’m trying, it’s /good enough/.

Like you, I’m an Athiest. I’m not living to a standard to score points. I try not to mostly live within society’s norms because I’m selfish, and it’s easier than not doing so. Upset people cause fuss. Breaking laws has consequences. I dislike fuss so I try not to cause it.

I hope you find your way. I think your therapist is on the right track, but what answers are right for you aren’t always clear to see.

There’s a linux command, called “touch” which sets the timestamp on a file. It’s used for several things, including testing that the user has write privileges and that the filesystem is working.

I heard of a sysadmin who used to use “touch kids”, creating or updating the file ‘kids’. Some sort of internalised joke, I assume. His boss told him not to because it was inappropriate. Then again formally when he kept on doing it. Dude couldn’t stop, like some form of muscle memory. Kept on using kids as a test filename.

So yeah, he got sacked pretty quickly.

I think it’s AKA as “JFDI”

You’re making the mistake in that his intention is to improve things.

He doesn’t have to make things better, he just has to say he has made them better. That’s all he’s ever done and it’s worked.