Master Obit

I think you have to fail the Turing test in order to be admitted.

Noam Chomsky

Perhaps he has become aware of this thread and is determined to keep going so more and more people can post inane drivel about how amazing it is that he is still alive. Maybe he's sat there lapping up the attention.

I assume that this website uses a formula for the age field that calculates age based on YOD-YOB. It's one thing that would be nice to see changed so that age at death can be correct, but I believe it's easier from a website coding perspective to do a flat YOD-YOB than it is to account for exact dates.

Noam Chomsky

It's a good thing he died after Glynis Johns because otherwise her death might have been really overshadowed by someone so famous dying before her.

Jimmy Carter for the umpteenth time.

Not dead up to the end of 2022. I'd have to check the physical fiche to ascertain up to end of Q3/2023 when I'm at the archives. I'd be more than happy for people to formulate a list of other people they want checking and I'll do my best to assist. It would make it considerably easier to keep track of.

I guarantee that almost everyone you post is considered obscure to 99% of the population.

I suppose so. I just don't see how it's enjoyable to spend so much time posting obscure anniversaries!

I'm not trying to be insulting, but how on earth have you racked up more posts than most members who have been here a lot longer? Are you automating your posts?

Dick van Dyke and Prunella Scales are daft inclusions. Would have been far better off being dropped. It's very unlikely either of them will die this year, and even if they did then I wouldn't exactly class them as misses considering their apparent health at the end of 2023. Replace both of those with Rob Burrow and Jonnie Irwin and you go from 0/2 hits to 2/2 hits with almost complete certainty (though it seems like being 50 or younger is a massive no for the deathlist pickers).

Lets go Jimmy Carter. Maybe he's been teasing us and will drop first this year.

Awesome - thanks for the clarification. Some good picks too.

Am I understanding correctly that immortals from last year can't appear this year? Is there a reason for this?

There are some good picks on there (for example, Beckenbauer). I don't understand the logic for keeping DVD and dropping Attenborough - I'd say it's far more likely that Attenborough will go this year than DVD (inasmuch as I'd be crushed to see it happen). DVD really needed dropping, as did Alan Greenspan - they're only on the list because they're extremely old, and it's pretty boring at this point. Drop them, and if they die then so be it - nobody would say they were bad drops. Can't see why Yoko Ono was dropped. Also don't understand why there is no Rob Burrow/Jonnie Irwin - the former is almost certain to cark it this year, and the latter is definitely very ill even if some of it does seem to be souped up for attention.

I'm afraid I only like proper meaty sausages.

I couldn't be a vegan because I love sausage too much, but I'd never advocate for people being forced to consume meat. It's all down to individual preference.

So is Boris Johnson, would you also listen to him?

People at the lower end of the IQ spectrum, and Daily Mail readers. Actually, they're the same thing.

It's just never Jimmy Carter is it? I'm saying no more.

That's pretty average though. I wouldn't say any of those are abnormally long lifespans.

On Bernard Long, I've done a bit of digging this morning (after opening a bunch of eclectic presents) and uncovered thus: There were three Bernard Longs born in 1926 in E/W/S - one in Barrow-in-Furness, one in West Derby, and one in Basford. There are two registered deaths of Bernard Longs that I can find - one in 2000 in Cumbria and one in 2013 in Manchester. This means that the one from Basford, born Bernard D Long, could still be alive. Unfortunately, it is rather impossible to narrow down which is the "real" Bernard Long without any specific information on him.

If you mean the 2022, yes. If you mean the 2023, it rather depends on where you're based in the country. I've sent you both a PM to save cluttering the thread.

Well 2022 has been available for a good few months if you know how to modify html. 2023 will probably be gradually loaded on to the system in mid-late 2024, but not be a public option for a good while after because the GRO team likes to be slow. It's the same story every year. They release impractical physical microfiche for each quarter to the archives, then at some point in the middle of the next year decide to start loading the data on to their online portal. Once they've done that, they wait another half a year or so before updating the year selection box so it's visible as an option. It's particularly infuriating because my primary use of the data means there is a need to go through the entire index every quarter. If it was released online then I could run queries using the hidden functions and get the data needed in under half an hour. Presently, even with one of my co-hobbyists having an arrangement with their archives that they can scan the fiche and then search the text digitally, it's about ten hours of work, and we also lag many months behind because they aren't regular with the physical fiche either (it took until this month for them to distribute Q2, and they also released Q3 with it.)