Sod's Law

For some reason my brain keeps conflating the songs All Night Long by Lionel Richie and Never Too Much by Luther Vandross. They each keep coming on the radio when I go into the office and I get confused by how the lyrics in one song don't show up in the other and vice versa. I also remember hearing the song Someone Like You by Adele for the first time and assuming it was sung by a man (probably James Blunt or one of those high pitched male indie singers who were everywhere at the time) until I watched the BRITS and found out who it really was. Yeah...

Well, this was unexpected. I would have put my money on Beshear any day.

Also makes me glad I have physical copies of Dr Who and sitcom episodes which feature actors later found to have engaged in some dodgy behaviour. Who knows how long it'll be before iPlayer and streaming services decide the public shouldn't be allowed to see them for their own good?

Deleted

Just as I thought it would, and the precedent for this doesn't sit right with me at all. Remove mention of his name, fine, but the idea that the public can no longer handle viewing a twenty second piece of historical footage based on the identity of the person announcing it seems perverse to me. Carry on this road and soon huge chunks of our media will be completely inaccessible because some extra in some scene in a movie was later found to be a rapist or something. You just can't always delete the fact that shit bags exist.

Not an episode I'd miss if I never saw it again, but I hope it doesn't mean that historic announcement of the Queen's death will be scrubbed from the face of the internet forever. The news comes before the messenger who happens to give it.

This has been such a comparatively dry year that I'm avoiding the threads of most of the names in the 2024 list. There's never any meaningful news about the majority of them and I can see maybe only one or two more of them passing before the year is out.

Or pick any right-leaning member of the Supreme Court, especially the Trump picked ones.

Aw damn, I used to like him too. I once did an audio tour of Cardiff Castle and it was his voice narrating it. He was surprisingly good at making the place come to life. Mind you, I also used to like Neil Oliver and look at the rabbit hole he's been plunging down since Covid. Maybe I ought to just stop liking people on TV (a lesson my parents' generation will have learned long ago by now).

When are you going to start making some sense? It's as if you think Starmer and Reeves are sitting in the Cabinet Office giggling and working on a 'Destroy Crem and his Dad' law as we speak.

When actually was it when serving politicians started churning out hissy fit columns in the national rags anyway? I don't remember that being a thing only a few short years ago.

Easy. Narcissists must be the easiest bunch of people in the world to manipulate and buy off. Just flatter them into following you with knighthoods and as many other golden perks as you can legally get away with while making clear that such perks are conditional on their support for you. Doesn't have to be high-ranking government offices. Just something to say 'you're special and you deserve this'. Yeah, there's the risk that another leadership hopeful could promise them greater rewards if they switched to their campaign, hence why I said 'as many as you can legally get away with'. Basically if Dorries had been awarded the damehood she wanted, she would be dancing around London singing Rishi's praises to this very day.

He should have called in Ed Davey to show him how it's done.

How embarrassing it would be if that burning balloon ended up floating into Notre Dame and burning it down again.

Have to say... I'm disappointed in him. He's half French on his mother's side and holds French citizenship. You'd think if there was anyone left in the Tory party willing to stress common bonds with European allies, it would be him.

Drawbridge mentality, plus a smug satisfaction in knowing their families were the 'good hard-working immigrants' who made it big in contrast to the 'good for nothing hoardes' who followed them. Of course, many right wing politicians with roots in migration (Tugendhat and Farage included) happen to come from families that were pretty well-to-do even back in the old country.

Please, Tugendhat, throw your hat in the ring soon. The only remaining experienced politician in the Tory Party with any shred of competence and ability to save it from completely decaying into Britain's own culture war-stoking MAGA cult forever.

Was just in a department store in Lincoln where they started playing 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Tears for Fears over the sound system and a gang of about seven 12 year olds randomly started yelling out the lyrics at the top of their lungs. I've only just googled it and found out it features in those Skibidi Toilet skits on YouTube which are like crack for kids in that age group now.

I hate it. I have to deal with forms for work that automatically upload dates onto Excel in the mm/dd/yy system but my workplace wants them in the dd/mm/yy system and I have to manually retype each one in the correct order, which is tedious and takes precious time away from much more high priority stuff. I don't care that this stupid dating system came first, along with Fahrenheit and not pronouncing the 'h' in 'herb'. That doesn't automatically mean that it makes more sense and anyone should stick with it.

Is there any way of removing a president from office if they're found to be 'not of sound mind' (then again, this could also apply to Trump too if he wins)?

It's six years for iPhones, I believe. Both Google and Samsung made pledges of seven years of updates on their latest phones only this year. Although the way they're pushed out on Android is very different from iOS. Play Store updates are completely separated from general OS updates so you could technically run a phone with a very old version of Android as your everyday phone and most of the apps would still work fine (unlike iOS apps which normally require the latest software release). As you say, it's the banking apps cutting off support that pushes people to upgrade.

I was hoping his successors in this seat would follow on the tradition in some way (maybe make them 'MP for Black Rod Heckling'), but no such luck.

It's sad that I'm more shocked it didn't happen sooner. That said, it really shouldn't have.

Why did he need the hair transplant when he wasn't obviously balding before he had it? Unless it was a toupee or a very meticulously placed comb-over?

I used to love the Works for the books you'd often find there that you couldn't find elsewhere, but they're clearly in the middle of deserting that market now and it makes me sad. It's depressing seeing the adult book section shrink every time you visit one and be replaced with even more kid's colouring books and glitter sets.