Things you hate IV

A bit fey, but not as bad as the others you mention.

For some reason I always think of this when considering awful 80s music.

 

i posted that on the Sissoko thread, as a potential song fir the lad. I was unsurprised to get no response.

(PS I quite like both “We Close Our Eyes” by Go West and “Digging Your Scene” by the Blow Monkeys).

 

It should be possible to have a sound clip that plays every time a post is ‘liked’. Ay Ay Ay Moosey for me. Maybe that Marillion ballad for you. Status Quo ‘Down Down’ for Going Down. The riff from ‘Are Friends Electric’ for moog.

 

NHS Test and Trace. Since all 4 of the Moog Family have tested positive, I've had an endless stream of calls to try and ID the places we've been and the people we've come into contact with. Fair enough - we all want to do our part to prevent the spread, however, the system is a joke. Firstly, they can't tie us together as a family at the front end, so every time they call about one of us, they have to notify the other 3 that they live with someone with Covid, creating a whole new account no. for each of us. That and the fact that we have to repeat every piece of information several times and when called on behalf of a child, they seem unable to tell the difference between me and the child we're speaking about. No, my child does not commute into London to attend a place of work in Shoreditch. No she doesn't drive a car or work freelance.

This annoying inefficiency was bad enough, but the latest debacle was when called about my youngest, who first had symptoms on Aug 27th, the incompetent operator entered her test date instead of her symptom start date as the beginning of her isolation. This means her isolation end date has been pushed back by 4 days. Oh, and there is apparently NO WAY back from this. Nobody can correct it. One idiot temp using a new system makes a mistake and that's it. It's enshrined in law.

Not only does this mean she misses nearly a week of school unnecessarily and I can be fined if she doesn't it also means that all the data they gathered about her movements and contact with other people is useless because they missed out on the period between her symptoms and the test. I told them this and they just pushed on, ignoring me.

Utter debacle of a system.

 

When you are eating a choc ice and a significant portion of the chocolate falls off.

Shakes fist at sky.

 

Genuine nightmare.

 

YouTube. Too many ads now. One at the start? Ok. Two and then interrupting each video? Just greedy.

 

Literally worse than Hitler.

 

Hitler IS a close second though.

 

And surely there isn’t a human on earth that doesn’t hover over the skip ad button (on the ones you can at least) as if it’s an Olympic sport to skip it as soon as humanely possible, rendering the add entirely pointless anyway?

 

I mean, you could just block the ads.

 

Not the place for it perhaps, but we are heading down a path where all the checks and balances to autocracy, put into place over the past century, are being compromised by fanatical zealots who believe their chosen team needs to win unhindered by the 'MSM,' the 'British Biased Corporation,' unelected judges, etc.

We've entered a new age of dicatorships. It's a very worrying time and both the UK and US are in peril as democracies.

Sorry - dipping into politics.

 

That sounds like a royal pain in the backside. Hope you're all ok

 

I'm fine. @Optimistichornet sent me some horse worming medicine and I'm soon gonna be right as rain.

 

Honestly how anyone ever came to the conclusion that ivermectin is an appropriate treatment is beyond me. It can cause severe neurological symptoms in people

 

It's this whole distrust of authority that has spread so wide over the past 5 years.

Government says it's dangerous, so it must be good. Government says vaccine is the best option so it must be the worst.

I think cynicism about government motives is good, but you have to have a rational understanding of government reach and the non governmental authorities who agree with them on certain matters.

 

Yesterday I was talking with my fellow rugby coaches and one of the coach's wives said she has a friend who will not have the vaccine "because she doesn't want that untested muck inside her", yet this friend of hers buys unregulated slimming pills off of the internet and gets tanning injections (I didn't know was such a thing), the bizarre mentality of some people knows no bounds.

 

Social media and misinformation have a massive role to play unfortunately. Scientists and scientific study should always be the pinnacle, but now all you need is a Twitter handle or a Facebook page and you can make unsubstantiated claims that can be spread far and wide very quickly.

 

I wonder how much is natural, organic social media idiocy and how much is nefarious spreading by rogue powers undermining western society. It's working too well.

 

They do reckon they can trace a lot of these rogue stories back to countries like Russia to start with. Pretty sure there was a panorama investigation into it at some point.

 

Facebook etc actively groups individuals by their political views, highlights stories which align with their views and hides stories which don’t, whilst making the site as addictive as possible, to boost ad revenue.

In the same way that the vast majority of a country is sure that one religion is correct, whilst a neighbouring one has a completely different view, how can you take a counter view if you’ve never heard it?

Social media amplifies the echo chamber through algorithms and then rewards individuals, like a virtual slot machine, for becoming more active and extreme. It’s just an incredibly effective way for shifting the views of a population.

And that’s before, as you say, nefarious individuals with differing agendas get involved.

Shut it down and kill it with fire IMO.

 

Spot on.

 

This is an old article I remember reading but scary as far as how far they go to get you addicted etc:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....day/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.amp.html

 

This is a highly simplistic, plague on both your houses take. There are not two sides equally right or wrong.

There is a heavily funded, irrational, conspiracy prone, anti-science, anti-expert view promoted and sustained to exploit the grievances of certain segments of the population. Promoted by both wealthy interests and foreign powers to undermine vaccines, climate science, social equality etc.

My Facebook, feed (and yours too I imagine) is full of science, art, cats, humour, bands, nature films, mild worthiness and charity, nostalgia social groups etc. The things we like. Sure it’s gamey and the platform addictive, but so is the TV. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with linking up with others sharing the same interests. It’s up to individuals to live a life that isn’t simply online.

And you don’t need to listen to batshit culture warriors to take a different view. I have wide groups of friends. They don’t all take the same positions. They may argue for things I don’t necessarily agree with. But they don’t argue that science is wrong. That experts should be routinely mistrusted. That doesn’t place us in a clique of equal value to the internet loons who do.

I often find my groups infiltrated or trolled by the cohort in the irrationalist group or by funded trolls. It’s not a competition of individuals equally wrong or right, it’s a culture war and they are waging it.

 

If you ever want to watch something truly scary about how Facebook can be manipulated by companies/ individuals, to push any agenda they want watch this

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4736550/

it’s about Cambridge analytica and how they used Facebook to swing elections (amongst other things)

I’m with you burn it down

 

People that don't engage with my cheese posts on wfcforums.com

 

You Gouda Brie joking. Etc. Etc.

 

We're in a post-cheese age of foruming grandad.

 

Whey out of line.

 

Restructures, especially when they don't actually tell you what the new structure is going to be.

 

Crystals. This is 100% a case of the Kings New Clothes. Absolutely f***ing bonkers.

 

Most New Agey stuff is dreadful cobblers. Don’t mistakenly enter one of those seaside places selling crystals, New Age music and ‘Dreamcatcher’ type tat. You’ll run out screaming.