colinb

Is it still the case that if you're in a private hospital for anything bigger than an ingrown toenail, and something goes wrong, then they'll shove you in an ambulance and take you to the nearest NHS teaching hospital, because:

- that's where all the big kit is - that's where all the top experts are - that's where the nurses and procedures are in place for critical care

?

Because that was the case 10 years ago. BUPA is great for seeing a doctor quickly with a non life threatening condition. And the biscuits [cookies] were nicer.

My knowledge of the NHS is almost a decade out of date though.

If a future Scotland gains independence and then seeks entry to the EU I presume (hah - big talk!) that the EU would require Scotland to adopt the Euro, free movement, full trade access and so on. Does that mean that England would want a hard border to prevent EU nationals from wandering in and taking their jobs? Does it mean that the EU would require a hard border to prevent the leaking of non-EU certified goods from England to Scotland?

I lived in Scotland before Brexit and the last IndyRef. Now I live in Ireland. Watching what Brexit has brought to Ireland (thanks Nigel!) makes me wonder what the thinking is on how an independent Scotland inside the EU would work? I suppose there is the precedent of the several other non-EU countries with EU borders. And indeed the history of civil war in Northern Ireland is much more recent than war between Scotland and England, so perhaps it's NBD.

> unanimously

mm. No.

I cannot read the article so I'm possibly talking out of line, but still, do you have evidence to back this up? All of my anecdata of the ~20ish autistic people that I know is that they fully understand basic horribleness.

I read that autistic people might have trouble reading the moods of others, not that they don't actually give a fuck.

Forgive my thread hijacking, but I suspect this is a place with people who might know the answer to my question.

Given that I have a pair of reasonably nice speakers but a lack of convenient wiring opportunities, I had thought to come up with something like an RPi based amplifier connected to each, with WiFi linking the two to form a stereo pair.

I.e. I have two speakers. Putting both of them near mains electricity is easy. Having wires connecting both to the same amp is a PITA. What cover thing could I do?

I can't comment on their morals or views on customers, but I think they've been governed by banking regulations for some time now. In my country (.ie) that's their claim. Banking regulations come with quite a lot of consumer protection, both national and EU originated.

that's interesting. How do they figure out school cohorts with such a system?

I guess our memories (and perhaps locations) differ. I remember The Economist championing Bjorn Lomborg. I remember the BBC getting Nigel Lawson on more than once to argue the anthropogenic climate change isn’t real. I’ve heard Irish parliamentarians tell us that only god controls the weather.

I suppose you can argue that much of our interaction with science is faith based. I’ve never seen an electron but I believe they exist etc. But I can’t shake the suspicion that if most of the world’s physical scientists think anthClCh is real, I should probably go along with them. Even if they do write awful code.

You seem to be getting a lot of downvoting, which is unfortunate. So clearly your use of the word 'terminal' is nonsense. You have no way of knowing that, any more than you know that China's will continue to grow or any other bit of economic crystal ball gazing, but...

I am interested in your assertion about the actual numbers 1980s vs today. Can you provide a reference for that please? The direction of travel in those 40 years seems plausible to me. After all, China has definitely become a much bigger slice of the world's productivity pie than it was then so others must have a smaller ratio than they did. But the absolute numbers are kinda interesting.

I'll bite. How is this to do with Brexit? My local airport is not in Britain but has been a shit-show for months. My understanding is that this is true for several major European airports. Can I blame that on Brexit too?

No. That’s not the case. I had a fixed rate mortgage in the UK. Now I have one in Ireland. Two of my colleagues have taken them in the last couple of months. They’re very common. But.. in both countries such terms are for a relatively short period. E.g 5 years fixed changing to SVR for the remainder of the loan. I haven’t heard of loans fixed for the entire duration. I would’ve got one if I had found it.

I can’t speak for the rest of Europe. It’s a big place you know.

“Taxis have never been an issue in the UK” is a statement that does not match my experience.

Living briefly in London taught me that you cannot reasonably expect a hailed taxi to take you from A to B no matter how hard it is raining or how obviously pregnant the person you’re with is, if the taxi driver doesn’t fancy going to B, even if B is still within 20m of A.

Living for far longer in Edinburgh taught me that the credit card machine is manufactured by the same company that sells McFlurry boxes to MickeyD’s. This was still true when I visited Edinburgh again 3 months ago.

Uber seems to me to be abusive to their drivers. And occasionally to their passengers. But there’s a good reason they were so successful early on. They made my life, as a customer, better, easier, simpler, less encumbered with bullshit.

how is that different that the Scots voting to leave the UK rather than remain part of the union? None of this is, or has to be logical. When I lived in Scotland I knew people who voted both for and against independence from the UK. Now, all of those people are pro-independence; and strongly in favor of an independent Scotland joining the EU. That might perhaps be optimistic - I don't know if the rest of the EU can convince a right-wing Spanish government to let a separatist Scotland in.

Also, I think the idea that all that matters is the economy is glib nonsense. Whether people should vote with their emotions matters little, when they in fact do vote with their hearts. My own feelings on Scottish independence aside, I wonder if the Scottish Nationalists would have had more success in the last referendum if instead of making an (IMO rather weak) economic argument, they had stuck with the more emotional case for independence. "Yes, voting for separation from the UK will make us poorer for a time, but it'll be worth it to <sound of trumpets> be free."

I am from a place that impoverished itself for most of a century via independence, but I don't think many of us would vote to back with our old imperial masters now.

I don't know if you read TFA. HN etiquette says that I shouldn't question it. Assuming you have, then please be the person who actually writes a book. I think you have a lot more understanding of the abrasive wear of normal human relationships than most. And you can put words together.

I also want to thank you for your comment that took a binary outlook on the world and introduced some small nuance.

[only the wrong sort of people don't like nuance. Burn them all I say! /s]

In this we agree. The Occupied Territories are IMO a travesty.

This is not a good-faith argument. If you cannot address disagreement without asserting that your interlocutors are glove-puppet, how are we to progress?

If you're going to argue from authority, then you have to be prepared to have the authority questioned. This isn't the USSR. We're allowed to say that your holy texts are nonsense.

I live in Ireland and although (((I))) might be more sensitive to it than you, I think it comes up quite a lot. A week or two ago The Irish Times (IT) was agog at Sally Rooney's decision not to allow her newest book to be published in Hebrew. The opinion pieces, letters pages, and of course Reddit were alive with praise for her "bold and courageous stance".

This kind of thing comes up every few weeks, at least it does if you read the IT who's editorial policies have a pretty clear slant on this - as is completely their right - even if I don't much like it.

This week the attention was on the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his dislike of Israel's recent classification of several NGOs as terrorist organizations.

Ireland is always at the forefront of confronting bigotry in other places. Not so much at home. (((I))) am Irish. I live in Ireland. I like Ireland. But our social justice pretensions are no shinier than anyone else's.

Ask the travelers. Ask those on Direct Provision. Ask the people who got dumped in Ballymun with promises of parks and shops, only to be abandoned for decades.

FWIW, it seem clear to me that the Palestinians have got the nasty end of the stick and deserve better, as much as you or I do. If the only answer you have is one that means that all the Jews in Israel die (ala BSM though they don't yet have the guts to say so) then the Jews of Israel aren't gonna help you.

If they don't fight, what outcome do you see?

> Success is determined by many factors, but they include Strategy, Willpower, Resourcefulness, Willingness to fail.

I believe you. I think the many factors also include dumb luck, in large measure. You didn't fall and break a leg. You didn't get food poisoning. Your laptop upon which you were learning all these valuable skills didn't die.

You took the risk to fail, and succeeded. I congratulate you - really. What you did isn't a trivial thing.

If you had failed maybe you'd still be smoking fish. (Though smoking fish might not be such a bad life - I have no useful experience in this matter). I contend that many more people who took a path like yours are still smoking fish than are well-employed programmers. So, your grit and determination notwithstanding, do you believe we should discard those who didn't make it to the soft-handed indoor work?

My standing desk top, a Fully Jarvis, is made from bamboo.

Comparing the illustrations in TFA to the thing I'm leaning on, I think it is constructed of a core of side-pressed pieces, with a thin layer of plain-pressed pieces giving the working surface and underside.

I've had it for < 1 year. It is a little soft, and shows dents and scratches where I set down moderately heavy objects with too much force, but it still looks nice. I guess I can think of the marks as evidence of actual use and life.

I hope you don't mind my asking, how hard was it to skip breakfast? I feel like I'd miss it, but maybe a new morning ritual can take its place...

When you say 'subjective attacks', do you include threats to rape, maim and murder? Because that's what this person faces.

I don't think that the right response to someone who has faced a threat to themselves or their families is to tell them to toughen up, or to hide. Neither of those would be accepted in the material world.

N.B. this doesn't mean I'm automatically in favor of removing anonymity on the 'net. I'm really not sure what I believe about that yet. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, then I disagree strongly.

A scheduled meeting with constituents i.e people from the district the MP represents.

Were you being abused for your skin colour? Your religion? Your sexuality? Your age? Were you abused by your supervisor? Did their mgmt chain minimize the harm this did, or did they tell you to suck it up or you've never make it in the big leagues? Did you eventually make it in the big leagues?

I'd love to know the algorithm used to arrive at this amount of money, because it seems quite large to me, but I'm very happy to see any company that countenances this sort of nonsense hurt financially. Big companies are not your friend. They're not your enemy. They're just doing what they think they need to. If safeguarding profits requires that they _actually_ enforce rules about racist abuse, then by all means, sue them 'til the pips squeak. LOL.

I think that this is less clear-cut than you might expect. [0] talks about "Dutch Hunger Winter Syndrome" as a heavily studied counterexample.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...

Braben & Bell, no?

nah Dude. Just you.

pre-WWII British literature is knee^h^h^h^helbow deep in casual antisemitism. Graham Greene, Stella Gibbons, John Buchan... they all got in on the act.

Of course, there were plenty of writers who didn't fall into this trap, but I grew up reading my Dad's knackered Penguin paperbacks and hit this kind of thing often enough to find it unsurprising if endlessly gross.

I don't really buy the whole "let astray" thing. Either Chesterton had rare penetration of thought, combined with half-witted bigotry that all his own, or you think he was so dim he couldn't identify stupid arguments put to him as an adult. You can't have credulous and analytic at the same time.

Hey. Thanks for your response.

Greek letters first. I’m not particularly knowledgeable of American military nomenclature. Where there Alpha, Beta, and Gamma forces first? “Delta” suggests small but vitally important difference to me; think calculus or mechanics (delta-vee FTW). Perhaps my inner nerd is getting the better of me, and I’m reading things into the name that weren’t present in the mind of the originator.

Where these aberrations? Maybe. It seems logical to me that for every outrage gaining notoriety, there are N more that escape attention. My own father said he saw plenty of brutality against civilians while fighting in the British army in North Africa and later Burma (now Myanmar obvs). It has been 50 years since tens of thousands of Catholic refugees crossed the border between the UK and Ireland. It was soldiers and policemen they were fleeing from. Britain had its dirty wars in Malaya, Oman, and Kenya (with some convenient record destruction for the latter). The US seems to have covered itself with less than glory in the prisons of Baghdad, and the black sites in Poland and elsewhere. France’s record in North African is pretty ugly. Italy dealt brutally with Ethiopia. The Russians raped there way to Berlin (yes, and fought bravely against the Nazis). Maybe aberrations aren’t as aberrant after all.

I’m not here to draw (false) equivalence between Delta/the Paras/whatever and the Nazis. But I stand by the idea that there’s something odd about professional soldiering. And not everyone who does it is in the business for there love of democracy and the flag! People who kill other people in the furtherance of national goals, rather than in direct defence of their homes need extra attention, and extra love sometimes, but always extra vigilance.