arichards.bsky.social
Avid cartographer, part-time psephologist, amateur musician.
170 posts
59 followers
22 following
Getting Started
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On the other hand, Journey to the West is only available in a highly contracted form through Penguin books and Anthony C Yu's full translation from 1983 just *isn't* available in even the more specialist branches of Waterstones.
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Having been constructing a sort of Literary Silk Road, there's an odd thing going on where the *more obscure* Chinese classics are easier to find full translations of in English. Cao Xueqin's Story of the Stone/Dream of Red Mansions is available in full in 5-volumes from Penguin Classics 1/2
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Said player's character, for the record, *did not even speak Elvish*
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I think one of my crowning achievements as a DM was managing to get two players to debate the correct solution to a puzzle by giving them *opposing* solutions based on what century Elvish they thought the inscription was. Then a third player resolving it by successfully dating the *architecture*.
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The Corridor Crew recently pointed out that one of the reasons why The Creator is able to be *so* VFX heavy for it's budget was 'working out the shot first so you don't need to make anything that won't be on screen' rather than building an entire CGI city and *then* picking the camera angle.
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Administrative hierarchy but the former allows the ceremonial counties to be shown and avoids a potential 'England is clearly distinguished and then there's the others all just lumped together' effect. Of course whether the Preserved/Lieutenancy counties are actually *relevant* is a question. 3/3
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With the current multi-colour indication extending across the area, or do I sort out separate colour scales (probably a maroon-red for Wales and a blue-tone for Scotland. Norn poses it's own question there) instead. The latter makes it clearer that these are clearly *separate* from the English 2/3
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Ah of course. That and the Suffolk Coastal/Waveney merger at the same time.
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Which at this time was divided into the Boroughs of Woodspring (now North Somerset) and Wansdyke (now the North East Somerset part of BANES) as well as the city of Bath- which was carried over unchanged from the pre-74 system and remained a donut authority. 3/3
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That being the year when the districts of West Somerset and Taunton Deane merged but remained within the two-tier structure- a unique occurrence I believe. As well as the usual urban expansions and parishings we also see the southern half of the old County of Avon 2/3
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Fascinated by the 1% of people who think Cats is a musical based on real people and set in Thailand...
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What about building a replica of Scarborough Castle *at Scarborough*?
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Anyway, I'm about two steps removed from shampoos professionally so I might be wrong but something worth looking into perhaps?
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And the risk of cyclosiloxane impurities which have been hit by some big EU restrictions due to suspected endocrine disruption properties. Whether that's accurate is... well the commentary from industry was quite *strong* on some of the testing.
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Done a bit of digging- apparently at least some of the old Pantene formulations wacked in a bit of Dimethicone - which is one of the long chain silicones. There's been a push to take this out of things due to a combination of the costs shooting through the roof since Russia was a big Si exporter,
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Got to admit this debate has entirely passed me by, but my immediate first instinct having been to that area is that it's a very... populated and farmed area compared to the established ones. Feels very 'we can't just do another one in the Highlands' in terms of location.
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Have you tried the Underrated Albums channel? Vaguely rock-ish usually but some variety in there at least
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It made the bottom of my Top 10 Sondheim works when I did my last ranking over 3 years ago, but that may have been too biased on "Comedy Tonight" in retrospect.
Planning to do another binge and re-review since I have tickets for Here We Are in June.
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There's fragments of Against Heresies from c. 200 AD but I'm not sure if any of those actually include any of the Papal names. Honestly I find it difficult to be sceptical enough to really work out what evidence wouldn't be accepted.
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We can presumably set the latest 'earliest to be accepted' as Pope Pontian (230-235) given that he's referred to in a physical inscription in the Catacomb of Callixtus. Presumably the accounts of that are sufficient to confirm back to Zephyrinus (199-217) who ordered Callixtus to create it.
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Ironically Adam's writing is literally an attack on his entire thesis (you think this job is useless, actually it's not) which the people bringing it up understand but where he's clearly either not comprehending or deliberating ignoring in favour of defending the specific example used.
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Also really have to praise the set design- creating a simple three room division with a single bit of structural scenery and managing to use a few bits of furnishings to create all the required spaces is very impressive when you've only got about 3 metres deep of stage to work with.
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And some very good incorporation of wider auditorium for the council chamber as well! 4/4
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Also really have to praise the set design- creating a simple three room division with a single bit of structural scenery and managing to use a few bits of furnishings to create all the required spaces is very impressive when you've only got about 3 metres deep of stage to work with. 3/4
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We're talking colour coded rosettes for the political groupings, Boccanegra giving a speech from a lectern (yes there was a seal on it), the Doge's fixers wearing lanyards, the absolute works. 2/4
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McGonagall is the obviously preferable choice and has the added benefit of being very definitely Not Trying To Be Maggie Smith.
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I can see it. Particularly RTD era. Martha especially fits the vibe of 'in the end, the best option for the girl is to just walk away and get on with her own life.'
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The bonkers thing is the Australia and its uninhabited flyspeck Heard/Macdonald islands are both getting 10% tariffs.
Norfolk Island - a *territory of Australia* has a 29% tariff.
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The unusual 2-field pocket of land shared between the parishes of Melksham Without and Broughton Grifford did not survive the 2010s however. 4/4
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Impressively, despite the massive additions to Melksham, Chippenham, Salisbury, Trowbridge, Devizes and especially Malmesbury there are still some quite sizable 'without' rural parishes which manage to near-encircle some towns. 3/4
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Then there were virtually no changes at all until 2009 when the remaining districts were abolished to create a single Unitary Wiltshire council. Since then there's been further extensions to urban parishes and the creation of new parishes for both Salisbury and the various parts of Swindon 2/4
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I know I tend to see it with emails from certain French business contacts where the flipped email address format and my surname cause confusion, but otherwise I'm at a loss as to why.
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Counter argument: Beyoncé and Jay-Z are *exactly* the sort of artists who someone who's primary exposure to pop music of the 21st Century is entirely based around keeping an eye on the top 10 charts would be familiar with.
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Is the significant transfers in the 1990s- whole parishes were transferred from Northavon to Stroud, Stroud to Gloucester, and from Tewkesbury to both Cheltenham and Cotswold - an unusual scale of change as either minor boundary adjustments or whole district mergers are more common 2/2
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Meanwhile I just rattled off the Habsburg Crownlands bonuses in University Challenge in rapid succession. Because me.
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stubborn in *exactly the correct combination* to produce the results seen- Someone less convinced of their own millenarian destiny than Frederick V of the Palatinate wouldn't have accepted the obvious poisoned chalice of the Bohemian Crown - indeed he was about the 4th choice of the rebels!
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Similarly Venice and the Byzantines were rivals for a whole host of economic and social reasons, but would someone other than Enrico Dandolo have succeeded in suborning the 4th Crusade so thoroughly? And the Thirty Years War is so reliant in a collection of very stubborn individuals being...
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The Roman Republic collapsed *just* because of Sulla, or Caesar, but their presence in a destabilising political structure shaped how that structure would further fail- and whether the result would be a 'Dictator for Life' a 'first among equals' or someone running for consul every year in a row...
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Oh absolutely. You can overstate it of course, but in general I'd say that societies which emphasise centralisation of power in a small handful of individuals dramatically increase the validity of Great Man Theory. Also the case where structures are in process of collapse. You can't really say...
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I've stuck to straight-cut for years because my calf muscles are actually quite big.
The last time I tried on a pair of skinny jeans in a store I almost had to ask the sales assistant to help pull them off.
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Yeah and then it really doesn't help things at my end of the industry when we're pretty much going 'yes one bit of new evidence says it might be a carcinogen, but *also* it's been used in every toothpaste on the planet for 60 years so *we absolutely would already know if it was actually a problem*.