Chindie

Lille are a very good side and we're cobbling the team together at the moment. I suspect this might be a difficult night. It's gone wrong at the worst moment with suspensions and injuries in places we're least able to withstand, worst of all Kamara who we are having to fudge things around to fix his being unavailable and subsequently harming us further.

It's ok, they're actually lying. Honest.

13 minutes ago, T-Dog said:

I did not know that. So is it moisture that makes meat go off? Very interesting this.

Sort of.

Meat goes off through a few avenues, the main ones being bacteria, mould and oxidation. Bacteria need moisture to survive, without that the vast majority will die or be unable to infect the meat. Mould is similar, though iirc they are able to survive in much drier environments, though again in a completely dry environment they'll struggle to take. Oxidation is a chemical process that you can't truly halt, but again with a dried meat it's greatly slowed.

Historically meat was salted to dry it but salt also alters the chemical makeup of the meat in a manner that also makes it harder for bacteria and mould to survive. Other types of preservation work similarly, pickling, spicing in some respects, etc.

Nothing lasts forever of course but in theory you can keep a lot of dried meats for very long times, especially if you keep it in optimal conditions, and all that would realistically happen would it would slowly, potentially very slowly, lose it's quality. Realistically it would eventually go off, it'll eventually gain enough moisture from the air or have things like fats go rancid, or (much less likely) it desiccates entirely.

22 minutes ago, Xela said:

Probably not wrong though. Never buy a car from the West Mids or West Yorks according to the internet. Plus buying a cheap Range Rover as well... you might as well throw fireworks in your own face. 

I never realised this was 'a Thing' until very recently. Watching one of Mat Armstrong's mate Chris Slix's videos he's made a few jokes at buying in Birmingham (he made a gag about it being very easy to get very cheap parts for every type of car in Birmingham, implying basically everything is stolen, and in another video stated one of his only criteria for buying a car was 'not from Birmingham' - which is all the more galling as they're all Leicester based), and then I've seen a few references to not buying cars from Brum.

Hearing you say West Yorkshire has the same rap makes me suspect there's a bit of a racist thing behind it.

Never buy a car in...

...

Charlotte's loss to New England is made that bit more bitter because New England's manager actually guaranteed they would win the match in his pre-game press conference. 

He then tried to claim he didn't do that in the post game briefing and was taken out of context, but he absolutely did.

They put some money in the meter in Tel Aviv then.

47 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Man City are so unbelievably boring to watch. Can't wait for Pep to leave. 

They're the most boring team in world football. 

It's impressive, if you can set aside the cheating that got them there, but it's so, so boring to watch. Technical brilliance isn't fun. 

RE3 is great. 

It's very short - a blind first run might take 4hrs and when you know the game and use it's unlock system you can quite easily do a run in an hour. It feels like a very ambitious DLC in some respects. It's much more action focused and the pace is pumped up, it has basically 3 puzzles in the entire run and those are pathetic even in the Resi stakes. It's very set up to be replayed and it's unlock system is set up with a view to doing multiple runs with different gimmicks you unlock. 

It's not perfect. The biggest issue is the final boss on the highest difficulties is nearly broken. It actually soured me on the game a little when it essentially became a game of rolling the dice and seeing if the game was going to let me win.

But overall I got 25hrs out of it that I really enjoyed. REmake 2 is the better game, but 3 is still very good.

Julia Garner cast in Fantastic 4 as the Shalla-Bal version of the Silver Surfer.

15 hours ago, Chindie said:

It's almost like it's a lobbying organisation for a foreign state and shouldn't be anywhere near any politician, really. 

15 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

 

Some would say that’s a valid point that really needs some serious thought.

Others would say it’s a conspiracy theory about Israel and therefore anti semitic so your point is invalid and you cannot be a Labour MP.

 

On this point...

He's **** bang on.

And that's setting aside the potential for wide ranging legal and diplomatic incidents. If we decide we can't justify selling things to the Israelis and that in turn means the Israelis are troubled in buying or using a US product, that will be a disaster - would the US seek to end deals with UK companies? Would they reverse engineer a product to ensure a US company makes it which in turn would instantly threaten the UK companies involved and possibly put them out of business overnight?

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

Which makes it an even easier ‘gesture’ and message.

Indeed.

The issue though, which no-one will actually say but is definitely making the people that matter twitch, is by making a stand like that it may make future sales to anyone more difficult. If you're in the market for some missile launchers, are you buying from a friendly UK who might screw you over if you choose to use them in a manner the UK finds difficult, or are you buying from Washington who don't give a **** (... unofficially, of course we all follow the rules, cough)?

These laws are right and should be followed, but realistically they aren't expected to be used - you sell to allied nations and 90% of the time that's good enough, and if they do shit themselves to your embarrassment just dither and obfusticate until it goes away.

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

We have UK passport holders that have gone over there to assist the IDF. 

We sell £500Million a year in millitary stuff.

There is nothing we can do?

Then we might as well pack up any international relations, any humanitarian law, any overseas aid and just hope thew world goes away and the small boats stop arriving.

Just a correction, it's about £500m over 15 years. In military spending terms it's not much, and largely down to the fact they don't buy much from us in respect of 'finished' items - they don't buy tanks etc from us, they buy components that are used on their own tanks, launchers etc, or those from the Yanks.

It's still not good.

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

I’ve read that we’re not permitted to sell arms to a nation doing war crimes. I’ve read that planes which contain (as I said) uk made components have been used to bomb civilians. Those parts were sold before the October attacks that set this whole genocide off. I’ve tried to find out if or what we’re currently or since October selling to Israel, but it seems to be being kept from us. Up until October it was a tiny amount in relative terms, given the cost of kit. 40 million a year or so. That’ll pay for a few HUDs and a bit of a radar. The way it works if  we stop allowing exports is that if (say) a Head Up Display is sent back to Rochester for repair, or of a radar breaks and requires someone from the uk to fix it in situ, the bod can’t go and do that and the HUD can’t be sent back to Israel. The F35 is more legally complicated. We make the empennage (rear fuselage) in the uk. The parts are then sent off to be assembled into planes. I don’t know whether a uk block on the subsequent export of “our” part of it to Israel can be enforced without US cooperation.  America is the key to ending this, if Israel continues with it’s current government.

Surprisingly, I'm aware of all of this, in a prior job I had to be trained on export legalities that included a significant section on military and military adjacent products.

It's obvious we can't 'unsell' things, and it's clear we're a smaller player in Israeli kit as the things we make military wise they buy elsewhere or make themselves in the main (historically I think we sold them some tanks but suspect those have either been superceded or the Israelis outright bought production rights to them) and thus we're probably down to components and perhaps some niche armaments, and therefore they're would be a legal nightmare to be had if our main exposure was bits of stuff that ultimately was a, for instance, US product, but it remains a problem that we are flogging stuff that ultimately is being used to splatter children.

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

Yeah. Though it’s not simply just him. Their whole set up is deeply protective and supportive of Israel and has been for a very long time. Biden really detests Netanyahu, whereas Trump likes him and enabled him to go further away from 2 state settlement.  And congress wants to send aid (why?, what for?) to Israel and sell them a who ton more bombs and planes.  It’s mad.

Of course it's not just him. Israel's reliance on US support and the US' psychotic desire to give it at all costs is well known, as is the extent to which pro-Israel money is in the US system - one of the big stories leading up to their election is the massive injection of money into pro-Israel lobbying groups who are looking to remove anyone not sufficiently pro-Israel to a near unprecedented extent.

I comment on Biden simply to point out that he's not someone on the moderate (for America) side of Israeli support - his record shows him to be a zealot in Israeli matters and thus any idea that he's going to pull the leash, even if he doesn't like Netanyahu, is forlorn.

1 minute ago, blandy said:

That’s the point. Parliament debating what words of very strong or very weak words of “Stop it you monster”, for Netanyahu to completely ignore is all very liberal and democratic…and almost entirely performative.

There is no (publicly available) information or evidence that the UK is assisting genocide. We’ve certainly not condemned it, which is offensive to many people, including me and most of the uk, and that’s sad for us liberal folk over here.

In terms of arms sales, as has been posted previously, we sell them almost nothing that goes bang, or launches things that go bang. Bits for radars, and then we sell America bits of the F35 and some displays for F16s that they then sell to Israel as completed fighter jets. The thing is, if we stopped that today, it makes no difference either. It’s a token gesture. We probably should and we probably won’t. Israel gets pretty much all its wooshbangs from America and Germany and its own manufacturers. We’re not a player to anything other than to a tiny extent.  It’s also the case that, acknowledging Israel is governed by a horrendous amalgam of right wing extremists and a crooked monster, forged together by the Hamas attacks) that under more normal times Israel is surrounded by nations and groups who want to eliminate it and it therefore needs to have the means to defend itself. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the rest are as genocidal in mentality as Israel has become.

The irony is that Israel has undone, for a generation(s) the progress that was happening towards a better relationship with its neighbours in the way it has reacted to Iran’s and Hamas’s “initiative” on 7 October.

A lot of high ranking legal professionals disagree with you, irrespective of how little we do or don't sell to Israel. We sell them stuff that quite clearly is 'in danger' of being used to eradicate a people, and that's against the law.

We soil ourselves being associated with them.

The current US President has a record on Israel that suggests there's not a line Israel could cross that he wouldn't excuse.

16 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Yep, haven't about 200 odd Palestinian aid workers already been killed and got very little mention?

Things might change if the US and the west actually restrict or stops the supply of military weapons to Irasel but we will probably have to wait for another 5-10,000 deaths for that. 

Yes it's a great stain on us that in amongst the 30,000 dead a couple of hundred aid workers already lay cold from Israel's deliberate targeting of aid facilities, following in their long tradition of attacking aid facilities whenever they can.

They're a despicable nation and we should be ashamed we stand by them.

In fairness I think I've clearly said '**** Israel' too many times to even set foot near a Labour Party facility.

And it's self evident that the concept of anti-Semetism has been ground into the dirt at this point.

4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I see the former Director of Labour Friends of Israel is now an official Israeli Government spokesperson.

 

It's almost like it's a lobbying organisation for a foreign state and shouldn't be anywhere near any politician, really. 

Fair play to the founder of World Central Kitchen, the charity that the 7 killed were working for, he's just straight up said the Israelis did it on purpose and called out their attacking aid workers. Good man.

Horror show incoming.