VinnieK

The closer we get to 2021, the more I'm starting to think we should have a moratorium on the cursed-2020 notion, if only because it's going to break our hearts when if 2021 is the same or even worse.

Cake then. At least I can say that I died as I lived: making stupid decisions in an easily avoidable situation.

Ok. Does the cake at least taste nice? I don't want my last moments on earth to be filled with indifference towards a bland bit of battenberg.

Cake...wait...is it poisoned?

I do have a Ph. D and already know a few medics, but the comparative levels of our qualifications have never really come up that much—largely because such a comparison is actually pretty facile when you consider the differing nature of the training (on-going, in the case of medics) and focus (incredibly narrow, in the case of Ph. D's) of each. Don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not denigrating Rachel Glover's expertise, but that's a different matter and one of experience and a skill-set that's been built up over years. As I say, I just found the simple comparison of a Ph. D, on its own, and a medical degree a bit silly and cringe-inducing because of that.

Yeah, if I remember correctly, one of the last tweets was about getting such harassment—something along the lines of how she and people doing similar work should face some kind of Nuremberg-style trial. I suppose it completely makes sense to the kind of histrionic apocalypse-junkies who think we're now living in a police state.

Last I read, Rachel Glover was also receiving a fair bit of abuse online from those who don't believe in the seriousness of the pandemic or have an axe to grind concerning the measures taken to contain it, which may be responsible or play a part in the disappearance of her twitter account. The comment about being a 'real' doctor was self-defeating and a bit cringe-inducing though.

I've tried, but I just can't! When I listen to 'Train of Thought' I think, "hey, that sounds a bit like Death", and then I just wish I was listening to them instead. On the electronic side, I have a similar relationship with Autechre and Aphex Twin. I'll listen, because I feel obliged to and will appreciate it, but halfway through I'll invariably think " 'kin 'ell, wish I was listening to a bit of Orbital right around now". Don't know what it is, but I've just got a block as far as they're concerned. It might be the case that when it comes to metal, I'd like experimentation to move away from the already hyper-technical sound into something more visceral, like earlyish Napalm Death or Carcass, or something more theatrically silly like Arcturus's La Masquerade Infernale.

For me, it's Starless. But everyone says that...

It's almost certainly a deficiency on my part, but I could never get into Dream Theatre. I don't know if it's just that their stuff sounds over-produced (to me), but they always sound like they're a bit too much on the sterile side of prog-rock/metal. Then again, that might just be a consequence of coming to it from an early-90s metal background where the whole technical/vituoso playing thing was so prevalent that slapping some wilfully exotic time signatures can seem like it's over-egging the pudding a bit. But yes, to echo The Teapot's post, nifty video! Sure the gig will go down well.

Just what I was going to ask! More Frippertronics please.

Economies of scale isn't really outdated - it's still an observable and pretty well understood phenomenon. The problem is that those who bang on about it the most as if it were some magic justification for amalgamating this, that, and the other forget (or, more likely were never aware of) the fact that there are also dyseconomies of scale.

I thought magic beans had been rebranded as disruptive legume tech, so as to better demonstrate how they're causing us to totally rethink beans and the way they're used?

This misses a couple of important points about the survey. The first is that, as Island Global Research themselves report, the sample for BAME respondents is small, consisting of just 87 people. That means that, were this a random sample (which it isn't), there would be some pretty hefty confidence intervals around that figure. The second is that BAME typically excludes anyone who is white, but plenty of white people in the British Isles can consider themselves to be victims of racism, i.e. Eastern Europeans, Irish Travellers, etc. A further point is that there's no useful breakdown of how the two groups answered: it may be the case that a majority of the BAME respondents who reported a perception of racism did so for the two higher categories, while white respondents by and large reported lower categories, in which case the analysis would have to be a lot more nuanced than "Look! White people think it's a bigger problem than Black, Asian, etc., respondents do!" That alone should act as a caution against leaping to (or insinuating) a particular conclusion about racism on the Island and how it is perceived. Then there's the fact that accurately investigating the actual prevalence and degree of racism and racist attitudes in a society is notoriously difficult and probably requires much more subtle and sophisticated techniques than Island Global Research were able to employ (which, to be fair, they more or less admit in the introduction). It's not really buried though. The result is right there on the page dealing with the Isle of Man, clear enough to see for anyone capable of adding three numbers together. It's not like they consigned the figure to a passing mention within a dense wall of text in section 5.6 of Appendix F.

My instinct is that he is probably partly right in a few places, but not the whole thing and even then possibly not for the right reasons. I'd be interested to know what comes out of what's happening in France at the moment, as I believe that their ITUs are under pressure at the moment.