simonywaking.bsky.social
Interested in finance, economics, politics, philosophy, literature and childish humour. Comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline, but occasionally tempted to turn the hot tap back on.
1,228 posts
525 followers
1,481 following
Getting Started
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A beef rib steak on a barbecue. Only just place so still raw, but already mouthwatering.
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Hardback copy.
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I believe ‘in principle’ assisted dying should be made legal. That is not the same as supporting a particular mechanism for doing so. We are in territory that should be familiar from Brexit - a referendum (or poll) on a binary does not necessarily lead to what people actually want or expect.
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I concede to your superior maths. I am probably wrong then, because I certainly don’t remember anything called Heron’s formula from O’level!
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I can see to go about it. Pythag theorem… conjecture some shapes that are not marked but which are implicit… equations to reduce etc. My schools days are 40 years in my past and maths was never my forte, so I can’t do all this. But I sense that anyone good at GCSE level maths ought to be able to.
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I knew I recognised her from somewhere!
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Most people don’t look at enough art to be able to recognise a style or an artist. Some artists - Dali, Kandinsky, Kahlo - are so distinctive that even people who rarely/never go to art galleries can recognise them. (This might include me.)
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If/when the Labour Party sinks to the same position as the Tories and they are desperate for someone to lead because no-one sensible wants to, Kendall will be one of those who floats to the top.
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I would seriously consider trying ‘load the dishwasher’ because you never know.
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And there are formal effects that can be created with words on the page that do not ‘appear’ in an audio book. Denying this seems to me to be an insult to writers who use these effects. Audiobooks are not inferior, but insisting they are the same as reading just seems daft.
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The fuel combustion sequence functioned almost perfectly, albeit at a slightly faster than optimal rate.
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It’s basically a fireworks manufacturer.
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I am counting on Gen Z to rehabilitate Gen X. Once they dominate the culture, they will use AI to write erudite neo-post-modern academic papers identifying us as a mysterious and overlooked generation that shaped the world by appearing to be of no consequence.
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I guiltily recognise that it is also a one-person environmental disaster area.
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(Cardiologists look away now).
When it’s an unfeasibly large cote du bœuf, cooked medium rare, served on a warm evening at a cafe in France, with lashings of garlic butter and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône. Followed by a digestif - preferably a Gauloise Brune.
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And a petty triumph for the lexiteers.
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Yep good point. Which makes me think whether something quite simple like introduction of minimum wage played a part.
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A guess: UK has seen a higher proportion of GDP growth achieved just by adding workers in low margin businesses.
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If I heard correctly, at one point Badenoch said: ‘I am rejecting the premise of your question’.
The sense I get is that Badenoch has been given media training, but instead of grasping the techniques is just bleating the theory out loud.
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Adrian Chiles is one of the greatest ironists currently at work in the UK media.
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The piece on R4 seemed to me to miss the most important point; all hold music does not have the same purpose. If you call a sales number they want you to stay on the line (appealing music). If you call any other number, particularly complaints, they want you to hang up in exasperation (shit music).
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I would not significantly criticise the immediate actions taken by policy at the time of GFC. The real lesson should have been that (largely due to leverage) asset prices had got out of control. It should have been a major reset. For those who owned houses and pensions (including me) it was a blip.
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Strongly agree. But policy interventions typically strive to avoid market corrections (for good and bad). Many people regard the GFC as a ‘bank bailout’ which in one sense it was. Few seem to recognise that if they owned assets (a house and/or a pension at the time they were bailed out too.
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FWIW I think definitions of art mistakenly see it as a quality inhering in an object. But perhaps it describes a type of experience rather than a category of objects. This probably makes the question ‘wot is art?’ even more fraught, but I think it takes it is a more interesting direction.
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‘Boris Johnson is Still a Fucking Cunt’ by Kunt and the Gang (2021).
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N
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And wearing nuclear powered wrist watches.
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Yes, it is poor writing, poor charcaterisation, repetitive.. etc. However, I have some lingering regard for the playful joke/paradox it sets up at the outset and then plays out to its extreme. It just needed a better (or just competent) writer.
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This video tells us that a battered sausage has ‘delicate herb notes’.
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All new technologies to some degree break/ruin older technologies. In a sense that natural. What is intriguing about tech over the last few decades is that it moves so fast it makes existing tech worthless long before its cost is reasonably amortized.
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The risk with the greater fool theory has always been that you run out of fools.
But we should not underestimate the major breakthrough made through the internet and Bitcoin, which is to identify and access a much larger supply of fools than has hitherto been possible.
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Fucking Jutes! Coming over here…
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Mainstream right wing parties in the UK have never made privatising the BBC a policy, because hitherto a BBC unleashed as a commercial business could have devastated commercial broadcasters. Soon this may no longer be the case. Expect Tories to make BBC privatisation a policy in the near future.
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Policymakers: ‘Building more houses will help solve the housing crisis by increasing supply. But it will takes years.’
Banks: ‘We can increase demand by lending more money. It can be done overnight.’
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And could businesses sue for damages for lost business and other costs, all in excess of the tariffs themselves?
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The peril of turning up late when you work in a hot desk office.
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2/2 In this light it seems to me the more pertinent question is: why was there not a permanent shift to recognising that banks are national infrastructure? And therefore why did we sell it back to the market at all?
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Another way of looking at this: overnight the government realised that RBS was a piece of national critical infrastructure. Its imminent failure would amount to a national disaster. Solution: nationalise by injecting the capital needed to keep it functioning and take ownership. 1/2
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What intrigues me most is the cultural reference point chosen by the journalist.
I am pretty sure that in approved journalese flying cars should always be characterised as: ‘like something out of James Bond’. But here we get: ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’.
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But a 2p coin can wreak havoc on a paint job.
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My fundamental problem with human interaction has always been its unwillingness and inability to objectify me.
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Gonzo and Fozie Bear, all the way.