https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/
https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side

These aren't books though. Doesn't make it worse, it's well written.
I'm sort of guilty rooting for the DPR. Less so with PLR; still, mildly fascinated.

Geoff Thompson's Watch My Back. Quite brutal stuff in there.

If we were the other place I would have posted the usual 'What I have / What I expected / What I got' strip.
I had thought it would be another 'tales from the operating suite' kind of book. It wasn't; turned out to be a memoir of some fellow on his path to becoming a neurosurgeon, interwoven with a guide on meditation.
Its official site calls it 'part memoir, part inspiration, part practical instruction'. I find this description fitting.

Started reading Old Wizard Moore's Jerusalem. Really enjoying it. Best thing I've read in a while but only 10% into it according to my kindle so will see how it progresses.

It's standard Jon Ronson fare, but it's making me re-evaluate how much time I spend on the internet. In particular, whether I need to have my phone almost always with me when I'm at home which I'll be checking constantly. It's a bit of a waste, 4eally.

>>64582
Oh my lord. It's like going back to Roman times.

Do not want.

>>20836
Yeah, you seem lovely.

>>20836
I don't think the climate is right for that even in the mountains.

>>20836
They'd get lost in the wilderness because they only know how to find East.

Looking through the Defra report, there's little mention of so called threats to funding but a concern of the 'national' status in symbolic terms:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/833726/landscapes-review-final-report.pdf

The report looks like it was drawn-up by bored civil servants keen to say the right things and, similarly, the interviewees talked about circular problems, such as feelings of being stared at, rather than racist owls. It argues for various unsexy things like mandating that all children should spend a night under the stars and highlights that various diversity successful programmes exist but they tend to suffer funding trouble.

Slow news day.

>>20836

I'd be completely down for building Al Aqsa 2: Electric Boogaloo in the middle of the Yorkshire moors.

>>64605
You have to admire the production values.

>>13344

I think you've got the nail on the head there, mate. I'm currently doing my Master's full-time but found the hours to
also work part time 50%, and am just about making ends meet. Though I live in an "interesting" city, I really haven't had much of a chance to enjoy it since blowing through my savings.

There's something especially suffocating about a lack of money, knowing you can't even pop into a cafe and get a coffee.

Problem is, my field is really very much concentrated in London. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is something of a Mecca for my kind of research, though there is also Oxford and Liverpool.

>>13344

StAndrews is ludicrously expensive to live in considering it's in the arse end of nowhere. All foreign money and tourism and student housing demands piled into one tiny town.

It's tax free mate.

>>13345
It does say something and I agree. I moved from a very cosy 30k job in the north where I had a huge flat, a car, and I was bored every weekend. Nothing really happens that stimulated me in the same way it does here. Also, if you're in your 20s, no kids, and can wait a few years to settle into mundane boredom where the neighbours getting an unsightly new door colour is the big talk then what do you have to lose by trying it?

In many ways despite earning more money, my quality of life has shrunk massively, but I'm still happier and London is popular for a reason as I said. These people aren't desperate to get to Doncaster.

I don't want to turn this into a London cunt off but I spent years avoiding London because of the same types of comments I'd see online like in this thread that made me feel I'd be miserable and unhappy. It's the complete opposite, £1.50 on a bus and there's always something happening.

I'm soon gonna be hitting that 50k+ mark and i know for a fact I would dream of hitting it in my 40s if I was not in London, so you have to factor in that cost of living accounts for the fact there are many more high paid jobs.

Lad - get on spareroom, ask on /r/askuk for other PHD students doing similar and see what it realistically looks like and be honest with yourself about what sort of luxuries you can and can't live without.

>>13350
> Also, if you're in your 20s, no kids, and can wait a few years to settle into mundane boredom where the neighbours getting an unsightly new door colour is the big talk then what do you have to lose by trying it?

Absolutely. Having been born there I always encouraged people to give London a try at least once in their 20s but (at least for me) once I hit my thirties and became a bit of a boring cunt the cost/benefit ratio stopped paying off. I was happier to have a bit more money in my pocket and be able to spend it on eating out and foreign travel.

>>13349

If it's tax free then it's plausible if you flatshare and scrimp a bit as others have said. Good luck, lad.

I think I went to bed at about 11. As others have said, it's not a good night for going out.

Everyone on facebook is making big long posts about the last ten years and how they're all so happy. Seems a bit forced but it's probably not, I'm probably just being cynical. I won't make a post like that, so I'll do it here.

I'm feeling unexpectedly positive about the year ahead, despite recently becoming single again, which wasn't nearly as upsetting as I assumed it would be. If anything I feel more free to spend time doing things I've been wanting to do for a while. Might finally dip my toe into getting my PPL, will certainly be working more on cars, and I'll probably claw my way up the ladder at work too, though working is also no longer the desperate priority it has been for me for the last decade.

It's an odd feeling. Not contentment, more just acceptance that whatever happens, I can deal with it, and the quiet realisation that my life has been pretty fucking unpleasant for a few years, without me ever really noticing it until I changed some things.

Anyway, I sincerely hope you lot get something good out of the coming months too. Nothing, and I really mean nothing, has been a constant in my life more than this weird fucking website, and if you're reading this, you're part of that, and probably part of the reason I'm not dead. So cheers everyone.

>>433274

>Seems a bit forced but it's probably not


It is though.

On facebook, everything always tends to be. And on most other forms of social media. There are studies now that watching other people present their lives on social media can make you feel depressed about the seeming insignificance of your own life.

One reason why I've never fully warmed up to social media as a whole.

>>433274

I tried posting here last night, but I couldn't quite get it.

>It's an odd feeling. Not contentment, more just acceptance that whatever happens, I can deal with it, and the quiet realisation that my life has been pretty fucking unpleasant for a few years, without me ever really noticing it until I changed some things.

You hit the nail on the head. I do feel quite sad that things have been so quite unpleasant for so long, but at the same time registering that it's over is giving me a good optimism. You're right about the permanence of this board too, cheers .gs!

Damn I feel rough today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SevyrAWBWtE

I think what I thought they did wrong was that they had this choreography which would have been impressive, but because the CGI was so overboard it looked fake and you couldn't really appreciate it.

Overall I thought the film wasn't as bad as the critics said. The first hour was boring and aimless, but from the theatre cat song onwards I enjoyed it.

lmao

>>64573
LMEOW, surely?

>>64563
>The first hour was boring and aimless
The show doesn't make any sense anyway. Cats is just a bunch of poems set to music, with a contrived "plot" to tie them together.

I think even if you like crunchy toast, that would be a bit hard. What's wrong with butter? Fucking vegans.

>>12247
So this is a Beatles album without any of their good songs on it?

Early contender for POTY.

u wot m9

>>64575
Keep up.
https://twitter.com/StinsonHunter

There's no quim likes to party like the quim down in Darty!

>>4954

what I'm hearing here is that he has just rediscoved stocism poorly and crudely.

>>4953
Part of it is people running youtube channels in this vein just need to keep a constant conveyor belt of guests to interview to keep getting videos out.
I've never really watched any of his videos but I would guess his approach to interviews is intentional. With good guests you can ask tough questions and you get good answers, but when you're interviewing the quacks and basketcases if you don't agree with them they become defensive and will never return for another video.

It was the same with Dave Asprey/Bulletproof. For every podcast with a guest whose work is based on good quality peer reviewed science, there would be two or three interviews with quacks with ideas like "you have to walk barefoot so waste electrons can flow out of you into the ground".

>>4953
> you'll probably love the Goggins episode
?

>>4959
Dunno what your picture is supposed to mean but it's JRE #1080 and JRE #1212.

>>4960
It's Mrs Goggins from Postman Pat.

>>15153

We did have that, it must have been a while ago as I remember it made my laptop overheat every time I visited. Good times.

>>15153
We had it regularly, but as the lad says, needed its own graphics card ten years ago.

I actually found the snowflake code again - bit late now.

>>15215
You could integrate it with some kind of weather forecast API to automatically enable it if significant portions of the UK have snow.

>>15215

Could we just have the ability to turn it on for individual users? Like a ban but far, far worse.

(I know already that we definitely can't have that but imagine a world where we could)

>>27332
>I was using Ublock-origin on Firefox at one stage for maximum autism.
Say what? That's the most mainstream adblocker out there. There's zero autism involved if like most people you just install it and fuhgeddaboudit.

Pihole is pretty good.

>>27332
uBlock is for blocking ads; if you want to block scripts you need uMatrix.

I use NoScript and once you've been using it a few months and whitelisted everywhere you visit regularly it really isn't that much of a pain as it is usually described. Yes when you visit a new site you will need to whitelist a whole bunch of other sites but it helps you understand what's going on under the hood, and it's a small price to pay to never be hijacked again by either someone trying to install malware, or the 'you are an idiot ha ha ha' pop ups.

>>27335
Oh that's what I meant, but when I was experimenting with Vivaldi after Firefox fucked up extensions for a weekend.

>>433151

Can you see theirs?

>>433152

No, but there may be something I'm not aware of.

Assuming you mean no onr can see my preferences, I can't look desperate to anyone. Except anonymous people on .gs.

>>433130
Or that he swiped left on her?

>>433280

She's the only person I've seen wearing that head garment, and I almost always check through all pics before swiping, but yeah this is a possibility too.

>>433283

She's also mysteriously disappeared altogether now. Ah well, no cute eskimo girl for me.

There's a president called Trump
Of America he's no chump
Shook hands with Il Jung
With Kanye he sung
And the lefties, they got the hump

THERE ONCE WAS A BIT OF A SPANNER
WHO FANCIED HIMSELF LORD OF THE MANNER
HE WROTE LIMERICKS
THAT WERE TOTALLY SHIT
BECAUSE HE WAS TOTALLY HAMMERED

>>64559
JUNG AND SUNG DON'T RHYME M9

Doesn't that oddly homoerotic cartoon imply that we're about to fuck America up the arse?

>>64568
No, it appears far more like America is going to use us as a butt plug.

I have had about £10k in Abundance for a couple of years.

They have been very professional, but the projects are not without risk: read the brochures before sticking money in.

There is also a little annoying how the returns are made available in dribs and drabs that require manual re-investment or withdrawal (and the withdrawal paperwork is a bother when using an ISA).

>>7822
Wow thanks!

>>7823
Thanks for the tip. What sort of return have you received?

>>7821
Good lad.

>>7824

The returns have been as advertised, so far. Some of the investments are very long-term, though (ignoring the secondary market - no idea how usable that is), so ask me again in 20 years.

>>7826
RemindMe! 20 years

>>64565
Excellent work.

>>433189
If anyone cares to read, I think it's vaguely interesting.
https://www.reddit.com/user/SpontaneousH/submitted/?sort=new

>>433199
It's almost comical how quickly that progressed. Who am i kidding, i laughed.

Would you say Christmas Turkey made into a soup and having spent 40 minutes out of the fridge in transport would still be good to eat? I had some made for me to get rid of the leftovers because I'm sick. Unfortunately I know what Christmas food poisoning is like and don't want to repeat the experience.

>>433188
One of them was an original Narkiss image. I'm going to keep it and post it next year.

>>433217
40 minutes out of the fridge? Fuck's sake, m8, get stuck in. That won't have made a damn of difference.

(I'm rolling the dysentery dice here today - roasting a turkey that had BBE of the 26th. Been in a cold fridge since, and didn't smell too bad. I'd be strongly advising against eating it, if asked on t'internet, but fuck it, I could stand to lose some weight, worst case.)

>>4425

Audis are for people who think they're better than BMW drivers. They're the same people though, really.

The only way to avoid judgement is to drive a Nissan Micra.

>>4426

I don't think I've talked about it here, as I think most people aren't a fan of them, but I've been having a lot of fun with my R53 Mini. A little supercharged nugget that handles much like a proper Mini, it really sticks to the road, and as hot hatches go, is pretty excellent. Drives like a mental 90s hatch, but has nice, modern BMW sourced amenities like stability control and heated seats.

Not too horrific to work on, everything is quite tight and stacked on top of each other in the engine bay but that's to be expected - it's not poor design as much as it is just not having the room to do otherwise.

Anyway, I bought it in March after selling my silly expensive car, with the goal being to run and enjoy a relatively cheap car while saving for the dream, a new GT-R. I've changed careers since then so that won't be happening for a while now I'm on entry level money again, so I'm happy that I've put the hours and the money into the Mini to make it run as well as it possibly can. Upgraded some bits and get 220bhp out of it.

The only real gripes with it are usual weird german things, like the decision to weld many of the underside bolts in to the car, which in 15 years in Britain, most have rusted to fuck and snap off when you try to remove the nuts, and the cabin plastics get a bit rattley. I'd be furious with this stuff if I'd bought it new, but I got it for a grand on ebay so I'm not that bothered that I have to weld new bolt threads on or pop rivet. The paint is knackered, but that's a good thing - life is too short to park at the far end of the car park for fear of dings and scratches.

The one major problem is that it's not a proper Mini, and every time I drive it I wish it was. My grandma had one, and actually loves my BMW mini, but despite having similar handling and a big speedo in the centre of the dash it's hardly the same.

Not sure why I felt the need to post this, have just been driving it a lot this week around twisty Yorkshire roads, and I've had a great time doing it. It's just a shame it looks the way it looks.

>>4428
> it's not a proper Mini

Yer, I dunno. I hear what you're saying about the BMW taxes that get added onto the car/servicing bills, but on balance I think I'd rather have a German mini than an original one.

>>4429

>on balance I think I'd rather have a German mini than an original one.

You're probably right, and the only reasons I pine after the classic minis are because I've never owned one, and I'm a car bore who likes old vehicles. They're not exactly practical daily drivers though.

As for the BMW Minis, they're absolutely smashing little cars and I think they only really get flak because of the Mini badge. If they'd have called it a BMW 160S or something, I doubt there'd have been as many people complaining about them back in the day when they were released. They've kept the handling of a mini which is the most important thing, it really is like driving a go kart.

I'm only really talking about the first generation of Binis, though, it seems every time they refresh the lineup the cars get bigger, and presumably drive a lot less excitingly.

I don't think I'd recommend one, not an older one, to anyone who is unwilling or unable or unequipped to do the majority of work on it themselves - nothing is 'difficult' on the car, but there's quite a lot of little tweaks needed to keep them (the S models at least) going and it's just all squished in there, meaning that many of the parts need an hour or two of labour just to access, let alone service or replace, and it's the labour that can rack up a hefty bill at the mechanics.

To illustrate my point, here is what BMW call "front end service mode", which must be German for "whole front of the fucking car off mode". These cars were definitely designed to only ever be serviced by manufacturer, but I suppose that's true of just about every modern car.

>>22998
>She has no interests, no agency, all she does is whine about things for Gavin to sort out.
Pretty accurate depiction of Barry girls really.

>>22998
Yes. I think one of the essential premises of Gavin and Stacey is that they are not actually the main characters, at all.

Everyone else is.

>>23002
True. Bryn, Smithy and Nessa are much more interesting. Smithy's sister is nice to look at too.

>>23002

They're the straight men in the piece, dramatic surrogates through which the viewer perceives the madness of their surroundings. c.f. Tim from The Office.

Dunno but I saw the actress who plays her in Debenhams in Leeds about eight years ago and she looked well fit.