Anthony

Since Tweetdeck became 'only if you give money to Musk', I've had to use regular twitter, so it has become 99.9% less useful for me. Previously Tweetdeck was always open in my browser and I could check all the important lists and feeds at a glance. Now I check @fesshole maybe once a month or so. That's it. 

2 hours ago, Chindie said:

I may as well follow up on recent events.

I got my referral. They recommended I self refer to another service, which I have done, but might take 3 months to contact me. I also had a pharmacist call and discuss putting me on something else (currently not on anything for being mental). Nothing has happened since that call a week ago.

How have things been since then? Dire. I needed to go to the pharmacy, which I can see from my house, and walk to in a minute, and I couldn't. I was sobbing on the bathroom and thumping the wall in frustration at just but being able to feel ok to go there. I eventually did it but it took well over an hour and 3 attempts, and when I finally did it I was literally going out of sheer rage, I was shaking in anger and frustration at myself when I finally got there, I must have looked like a maniac. 

I've also failed to pick up the girlfriend so many times we've stopped my going to get her most of the time. The last time I picked her up I got caught in traffic at the top of her road and was screaming at myself in such a rage my voice was hoarse for about 4 days. I also have spent most of the week trying and failing to go fill the car up. Including an hour tonight trying to prepare to go where I completely failed and decided I wasn't sitting there all night sobbing and bruising up my arms from slamming the walls in rage and frustration at not being to simply get in the **** car and go fill it up at a petrol station a 2 minute drive away. And now I'm sat here being contemplative about what all this means. And I'm just thinking about my life is so empty and so pointless, how all of this is absurd, and how my little corner of this nasty little world is **** empty but for frustration. How every evening is a waste and every day is pointless at a deeply frustrating and maddeningly hopeless job to hide party stone books to sustain this nightmare. And how even writing this is pathetic impotent whinging for which any response is pointless and any threat is empty, even though a significant part of me is saying the sensible choice is bleeding out, and shouldn't be written because it's pathetic and you should just get over it. But equally I've got no way to vent and bottling it quenches nothing. I hate it all.

 @Chindie@Chindie@Chindie@Chindie  oh the **** irony! I'm trying to reply, but my phone and keyboard are going nuts as soon as I @ you. 

Anyway, it sounds **** shit, and you deserve better. I haven't been exactly where you are, but **** close. Unable to even start doing stuff. I eventually lost my job, not because I was ill, but because I didn't send in my sick notes. Which were on the table. I lost thousands because I couldn't put a piece of paper in an envelope. 

I'm about to go to bed, so I'm not going to type long, but for me all the depression, all the lost years, lost relationships and lost opportunities came down to one cause. ADHD. And it took **** ages to find that out. 

I hope for you it's something as simple, but being **** around by people who are supposed to give a shit, but don't, makes it so much harder to get the support you need and deserve. It still gives me rage like nothing else. 

If you want to pm, please do. 

On 13/02/2024 at 20:19, Designer1 said:

Still got my ticket from when I saw them at Edwards No8 many years ago. Think it was £6

Saw them in FInsbury Park in 1992. They were crap. The only notable bit was when they dedicated Even Flow to one of the girls from L7 whose period was late. Nice.

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

It just tells you that these economic sanctions don't really work, especially in dictatorship countries like China, Iran and Russia. Russia is still selling oil, gas, diamonds etc. They might hurt economically in the long term but they don't stop wars. Europe/NATO use these sanctions as a way of avoiding the topic of entering in the war on Ukraine's side which is what they should have done in the first place. 

I said upthread about how sanctions work/don't work. (I don't expect you to scroll back and read everything!) They're not meant to block everything completely, but to make things more expensive, complicated and difficult, and the more complicated and difficult it is for Russia to eg export oil or import high tech bits, the easier it is to disrupt. As a result of sanctions, Russia has less money, things take longer and are easier to disrupt. If things are completely blocked from getting in or out, then that is a bonus.

7 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

"Believing in yourself" is way overrated.

I don't believe you.

21 minutes ago, bickster said:

Yep and I say that as fan and so does Michael Stipe

Michael Stipe doesn't know shit. And neither do you.

If you take it in the right spirit, I think REM's Shiny Happy People is OK.

3 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

No, they're not. They can't really be used offensively because the Russian air defences are too strong - they're mostly just a somewhat more capable replacement for the old Soviet jets the Ukrainians are using defensively to shoot down cruise missiles and patrol their own territory, because it's hard to get replacement parts for the old MiGs. It's about maintaining the capacities Ukraine already has more than giving them new ones.

Basically you won't see them winning many dogfights with the Russians because air-to-air missiles only have good range if you fly high, and if you fly high in a contested area then you're vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles.

F16s have better radars, amongst other things, so will be able to see further, which means the Russian air force will have to launch their weapons from further away. This means 1) more time for them to be intercepted and 2) what the Russians can hit is somewhat decreased. I'm sure our resident radar expert can correct/expand on this.

Additionally, for the past 12 months or so the Ukrainian forces have been concentrating on neutralising Russian air defences, my assumption is to increase the safety of the F16s when they arrive, thereby giving them more flexibility and give them a greater impact.

SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences) is one of the most dangerous jobs for a pilot, but essential for air superiority. The fact that much of it has already been done by ground forces makes things much easier for any air operations.

What remains to be seen is how good Ukraine can be at combined arms fighting ( coordinating ground and air forces); this is something NATO spends a good chunk of its time practising as it is so difficult to do well. That said, Ukraine has been doing it for a while and one of their (IMO main) strengths thus far has been the ability to quickly learn from their experiences. Russia is also learning, but nowhere near as quickly as Ukraine.

15 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Yep. Can’t wait for tomorrow and hopefully to feel normal again. Going to have an early night.

Why do we do this to ourselves ?

Cos we're human. We've all done it. I say this just in case you were thinking that it's only you.

2 hours ago, sidcow said:

This seems the closest they have on YouTube. 

It's not the full thing and I don't think entirely the original but it's close. 

Mozart was the only one that worked, ignore the others (my kids did) 

 

Is, is that supposed to make you sleepy? Holy crap, it sends my blood pressure through the roof! Mozart, good. Mozart played on whatever they're using, good god man, that's torture.

17 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I'll be even more controversial than that - Keep Right On is also a damn good anthem, and if I'm honest, better than anything we've got. 

I agree, but it hurts. 

Sort of... You could upload them to YouTube, but make them private. IIRC there are three settings, 1) Public, 2) not searchable, but if you have the link you can watch it, or 3) it viewable by you and specified individuals. 

Any of those work for you? 

Finished Deadloch. Astonishingly good. Excellent writing, believably real characters, superb performances. So, so good. Possibly the best thing I've watched in a year. 

My girlfriend's birthday today. She's just been attacked and bitten by her neighbour's dog for the second time. Second time drawing blood. Thankfully it's not a big dog, but one of those yappy shit dogs. Needless to say, she's really shaken up and I'm **** livid. 

3 hours ago, Designer1 said:

Just back from:

Easily the most emotional movie I've seen for a long time.

It takes the often used themes of loss, grief and isolation and avoids the clichés while constructing its brilliantly written and original story.

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are both on their A-Game and I'm not gonna lie this one got me right in the feels.

Superb stuff.

 

Got this booked for Sunday afternoon matineeeeeeee. Looking forward to it.

Well.

Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.28

On 30/01/2024 at 09:33, mjmooney said:

Was looking forward to a slap-up birthday lunch at Brasserie Blanc, but I have an absolute stinker of a head cold (doubtless contracted at last Saturday's party). Annoying. 

Going to the one at South Bank on Friday for my girlfriend's birthday. I'll let you know how great it was.

On 28/01/2024 at 15:29, mjmooney said:

Actual birthday is on Tuesday. 

Happy birthday sir.

Just now, Mr_Dogg said:

Do you weigh it? A double should be 35-50 grams 

No, but the grinder has a doser with a fixed size, so it should be the right amount. It looks about the right amount when it's in the basket, and if nothing else, it's been consistent the entire time I've had it. Might give a few doses a little weigh though...

2 minutes ago, limpid said:

Are you tamping it properly? It could be a  bunch of things, Do you get a solid puck after extraction?

Yeah, a very solid one actually. Is that a KW?

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

see for me I find the machines don't make it warm enough and thus I find myself having to find an alternative method to bring the coffee up to a warmer temperature ( pipe down @chrisp65  )

has to be close to scalding hot before I'll drink it 

 

Well quite, but if it's too hot when running through the ground beans it tastes like burnt shit, with a hint of coffee. Kind of like Costa.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

This is a simple question with quite complicated answers. In general, bitterness comes from overextraction, sourness comes from underextraction.

There's a few key variables you can play with: you can adjust the grind size, it could be you're grinding too fine and so you're overextracting and creating that bitterness, so you could try dialling back a bit, going a bit coarser, but if you go too coarse you'll soon introduce sour shots that flow too quickly through the coffee. Temperature can also be an issue, but you're aware of that (hotter water extracts coffee more quickly), sop the other thing to consider is that you could reduce the water to coffee ratio (too much water will over extract, too little water will underextract). Grind size is probably the first place to start of those, IMO.

Of course it could just be that the coffee you're buying is genuinely very bitter, have you tried lighter roasts that you have tried elsewhere and definitely like?

Ha, yeah , at the moment the coffee flows out too quickly AND it tastes bitter. How the fugg does that happen?

I use a triple bottomless basket, and extract into a double shot glass, so it shouldn't be too watery. In theory.

I'm going to **** about with it this afternoon and see what I can find out.

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

You don't like coffee? 

How dare you! Bloody Palestine.