Be Excellent To Each Other

I was in Nottingham on a stag do and we didn't go there for food we went to the place with the Clough statue outside it. After that, we lost contact with the main group after we ended up in Boiler Maker. Using our Fine Minds we went to Flirtz but they weren't there, either, so we did our bit for student debt.didn't go on a tram, either. Some pubs were good, though.

Exploitative how? Maybe exploiting the customers. Sounds like you don't want to allow women their own agency… how patriarchal!

The food is rubbish and the atmosphere is too.

Nice try, mypsy.

I'm not a massive fan of strip clubs myself, but I am happy for them to exist as long as the workers are paid well and enjoy their work.

Genuine, non piss-takey question, but do you think the same about sex workers?

It's something Ruth and I have had a few conversations about and I'm still not wholly sure where I land on it. instinctive liberal lefty approach is "of course women should be allowed to do this, it's fine, what people decide to do in a private consensual transaction is up to them" but the empirical evidence tends towards the fact that it still ends up being vaguely exploitative if not a mask for illegal people trafficking. She's more liberal on this than me.

IMO, that's more of a discussion around whether sex work should be legalised and regulated. As far as I'm concerned, I'm with the "liberal lefty approach" - if that's what people want to do, and it's all consensual then go for it.

The issues lie where there's no (or coerced) consent, i.e. with the trafficking. Legalisation would go quite a long way to sorting that out, I feel. Although apparently it is still quite a big problem in Amsterdam, so who knows. It would at least give those affected a "proper support channel" though.

That's what I thought, but that's the problem. From what I've read (albeit on the Guardian) it has provided a "legitimate" channel for people trafficking, so has perhaps vaguely reduced the net negative slightly, but not that much. But yes, the basic moral position can't really be anything other than "why the hell shouldn't women or men do what they want in terms of selling their bodies" but then real life doesn't make that easy.

Yes I'm fine with it, with some caveats. You could argue that delivering Amazon parcels on a zero-hours contract is more exploitative than doing cam or phone work from home, for example.

You could probably earn more on a cam. Well... not you specifically.

Rajesh brought me an Amazon Echo last night on his little scooter and I thought of you, mypsy.

Yeah, that's certainly potentially true.

Prostitution though... Dunno. It's definitely one of those ones where the answer can't really be anything other than "it's a bit more complicated than that" regardless of the question.

I think Myp almost certainly could

I don't think I've ever seen the same Amazon delivery driver more than once.

I don't think I've seen one. Pickup lockers for the win.

That would be quite fun I think. Better than driving through the centre of Loughborough in a big Mercedes where it's all double yellow lines and a one-way system.

Derbyshire villages are my favourite. The local pubs will take customer parcels and always loads of places to park.

I was skim reading and initially I read that last word as "wank".

wot's ur camtag m8?

It's genuinely shocking how far the world has moved on in such a short space of time. I don't think people often sit back and really consider the implications for human relationships, interactions and culture of the fact that not fifteen years ago your best bet of communicating with someone was a letter that would take several days to get to them, and so a response might take a couple of weeks. But now? Now the world is so much smaller, relationships can be maintained where once they might have withered from something mighty to next to nothing, like a decades old elm with a filthy foreign disease. Now though? Now? It's a thing of absolute beauty. One of mankind's most amazing achievements - the world is so much smaller than it used to be. Now the world is just as small as your room or as big as your imagination. Now? Now I can sit here on the other side of the world and say:

MYP!

MYP!

YOU'RE A CUNT!

And it's instant.

Keep drinking Chris, I've got a free afternoon.

Giphy "popcorn":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/aTjmAp0qPAGcw/giphy-loop.mp4

Oh, funny. I've had three beers and I'm now off to bed.

BOOO!!!

It took eight minutes because I was doing something else.

I love you man.

I went to Hooters in Nottingham on a stag do. I remember the food being okay, the beer being highly plentiful, and our waitress being properly fit.

And then I remember feeling sad when the people from a table near us got their waitress to take a photo of them while they stood with our waitress, as theirs wasn't as pretty (or... Um... As "hootery").

And there was a crown for the BEER KING.

You're drunk. Get away from me.

Tell me more!

(a) 3 pints
(B) victim blaming is beneath you

He's clearly not that drunk - he's not yet asleep.

BEER KING didn't have to fetch (or pour) his own beer - someone did it for him. You could challenge the BEER KING every now and again to WIN THE CROWN - the challenge could be anything that the BEER KING had a reasonable chance of winning (so no "tallest wins", more "paper scissors stone").

Some observations about driving on motorways:

1. A lot of car drivers don't like being passed by vans. I'll be on cruise control at 67mph (because the odometer in the van says I'm doing 70, while the sat nav and dash cam both say it's only 67, but telematics will squeal at me if I drive at 70 as it's linked to the odometer, not the actual speed on the road). I'll pass someone on who's dawdling along in lane two at 65mph and almost immediately they'll overtake me and then gradually slow down again ... until I pass them again, and so the cycle continues until one of us leaves the motorway or traffic build up gets in the way of our little game of leap frog.

b) A lot of drivers appear to be scared of driving in lane 3. They'll come up behind me when I'm in lane 2 and slow down to stay behind me, even though lane 3 is clear and there's nothing coming up behind, so nothing to stop them overtaking. As soon as I move back into lane 1, they'll pass me.

iii) Let's not talk about members of the Lane Two Owner's Club.

Oh yeah B is really annoying.

Mr Bloom has just started on CBeebies. I have reassessed my feelings about him. I used to find him really, really irritating, but now I think he is lovely and also rather pretty to look at.

So he's grown on you?

"middle lane wankers"

I fucking hate the way some people drive on the motorway. People who can't maintain a speed (you don't need to have cruise control to stick to roughly the same speed). People who drive too close. People who sit in the middle lane even though the left lane is clear. People who cut right in front of HGVs. People who sit in the right hand lane unnecessarily. People who don't look before they overtake. People who jam themselves into my gap with the car in front taking my braking distance. People who - and this is generally only in the celica - think that me overtaking is an invitation to race (sometimes this is just a "my penis is bigger than yours thing" and they see it's a woman driving and then back off again )

Generally I just hate other drivers tbh.

Whenever I get frustrated on the road by somebody else's driving, I tend to think that I've probably done stuff to annoy other road users as well and if nobody's hurt just carry on.

That said, the tailgater who tooted his horn at me because I was waiting for a pedestrian to finish crossing the road before pulling into a junction recently can go and reflect on his anatomical deficiencies.

It's often impossible not to. Braking distances at motorway speeds (being generous and saying that's 70mph) are just over 100 meters. That's a long way.

Braking distance for slowing down though, not for immediate stop, right? Can’t imagine a busy motorway with enough room for full distance.

Good luck calculating that on the fly, though

Yeah, but the car in front isn't coming to a stop instantly, it's slowing down too. So you might not need the full 100m, but a bit of space is nice (says the non-driver)

Unless it hits something which causes it to slow at more than its maximum breaking rate.

But if you're Lara Croft and jump off of it...

I'm sure that's the case, and they are fully allowed to rant about me on their interwebs forums


I meant more people who swerve into lanes at the last minute e.g. to overtake something because they've not anticipated that need earlier taking my definitely-not-100m-space. If someone indicates in good time and the gap is an 'unhealthy' size I'll happily accommodate.

What super pisses me off is people dangerously cutting in in front of you when there's half a mile of open lane behind you. Cunts.

That's because you're in the middle lane.

Even if that were true, which it isn't, that is cunt work.

‘Not anticipated.’

And not planning far enough ahead. I know I’ve been guilty of that in the past, but since I took the RoSPA course last year I’m much better. In medium to heavy traffic travelling at around 50mph, I’ll be getting into lane one around a mile before the exit on which I intend to leave.

This is strangely addictive
http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html#

‘Long lost barley’

I thought I had shown some appreciation for this pun, but o now see o did not and I feel bad.

I giggled at the time, though.