Guessing you might have been being rhetorical but I’ll give my take anyway… The stabbings were just the spark that ignighted it all.

They do not have a common goal but they are united in thinking immigration levels are too high, despite it being a net benefit to the country. From what I’ve seen they generally fall into 3 groups:

1. EDL/BNP/facists/racists who have been whipping up anti-immigration rhetoric forever. Emboldened by extreme language used by Farage, successive Conservative governments and no doubt rhetoric from the convicted felon across the pond. They blamed the stabbings (and every problem ever) on immigrants despite the fact it was carried out by an autistic kid born in this country.

2. Brexit/Reform voters who see themselves as “more centrist” because they aren’t as far-right as #1. They blame years of austerity, worstening living conditions and growing class divide on the idea “the country is full”. They thought Brexit was supposed to solve this and are now protesting because it hasn’t. They claim it wasn’t done properly so voted Reform but got a more centrist government instead. They want to make their dissatisfaction heard but as far as I know do not condone the violence. They might now know the stabbings were not linked to migration but the issue has escalated beyond that incident now.

3. Young people who are generally not very well informed on any of the issues and have been fed misinformation on their various social media channels encouraging them to join the protests. It’s the holidays, they are impressionable and angry. They think they’re part of some revolutionary movement or just drunk and up for some chaos so are out with their mates filming it all in their phones for the views. I imagine as they become more informed they will align with #1 or #2.

Shame climate change has rendered it about as useful as looking out the window at predicting the weather.

Isn’t that the joke?

Ok fair enough, just thought it was strangely straight for an “I’m ok folks” wave.

Anyone notice the salute Trump gave mere seconds after the shooting?

He swiftly turned it into a wave/fist and weirdly brought up that it was definitely a fist during his last speech.

Me: Here’s the URL for the web service I’ve just deployed. I’ve set up users and permissions so just copy it into your browser and you should see a very similar system to what you’ve been trained on with all your data in there.

Customer: All I’m getting is a blank screen.

Much panicking and headscratching later…

Me: Waaaiiiiittt, did you press Return/Go after copying the URL?

Customer: That was not in the instructions.

Good to see the left/centre rallying when it mattered most need to reject fascism again.

From an outside perspective this seemed like quite a shrewd political move by Macron for once. Is that a fair assessment?

I was going to say “Planet Earth” but yes you are correct.

The scientific method itself considers any as yet unsubstantiated theory as hypothesis. Applying this to the idea of God would leave one agnostic on the issue.

A couple of prominent examples of religious dogmas disproved by scientific discoveries are the Copernican Revolution and evolution by means of natural selection.

So apparently I have a similar contorted expression to my mother when eating sour food.

My father always referred to this as my mother’s-maiden-name-gene. Let’s say her maiden name was Chaplin, he would say “Ah there’s that Chaplin gene again!”

Being young I misunderstood this as a verb, ie. I was “chaplinging”.

Cut to first year of school where I proudly waltz around informing any classmates eating fizzy sweets that the correct and proper term for their reaction is “chaplinging”. It was a few years until the penny dropped.

Morgoth:

🇺🇸 “Baadel a waader” 🇺🇸

Probably because it’s down. I for one am surprised they have no failover for when Bing goes down.

✅ Math is hard

❌ This math is hard

Nah it’s just SFA with extra steps.

That’s why I mentioned those other console exclusive features. Anyway the original point was about cost and I think the Series X was the best value for money at launch this gen…

• Half the price of building a similar PC at launch.

• Rewards are higher on console so recoup the cost more than PC.

• I use Game Pass on both PC and Xbox with a single account to play multiplayer so cheaper on that front.

We’re half way through the generation now though. PC parts have got cheaper, Game Pass Ultimate conversion ratio has dropped and rewards are drying up so probably wouldn’t advocate it anymore. PC likely to be better value next gen.

I always gamed predominantly on PC but this generation I did the maths as PC parts had become over-inflated so decided to give console a try. I still think it was a decent decision for this generation…

Game Pass can be had waaaaaay cheaper than that and you can get it all back and more in rewards points.

I spent £450ish on the console at launch including controller and a game. Equivalent GPU was £500 or more at the time.

Spent £150ish on Game Pass sub from November 2020 to July 2026 which has allowed me to play countless games I never would have bought outright.

I’ve made over £700 back in vouchers with over 2 years left to accumulate more. Spent half of it on games, and controllers, headset, etc. all of which I can use on my PC. Plan on saving the remaining vouchers to put towards my next PC build.

This is without mentioning other console benefits like low maintenance, Quick Resume and the fact I can use one copy of a game to play with two players online.

eXpLaIN hOw im OuT oF pOcKeT.

Yep my sentiment entirely.

I had actually written a couple more paragraphs using weather models as an analogy akin to your quartz crystal example but deleted them to shorten my wall of text…

We have built up models which can predict what might happen to particular weather patterns over the next few days to a fair degree of accuracy. However, to get a 100% conclusive model we’d have to have information about every molecule in the atmosphere, which is just not practical when we have a good enough models to have an idea what is going on.

The same is true for any system of sufficient complexity.

Oh yeah no regrets, was bound to happen eventually and still a decent month for me with the Boltgun and NMH additions.

Seems after years of avoiding buying games that end up on Game Pass it was finally my turn to appease the Game Pass gods. Bought Control Ultimate over the holidays and am yet to play.