Graeme

Chilaquiles Colimotes  - fry corn tortilla chips until golden then coat them with beaten egg, char some tomatoes on the grill and blend them to make a salsa, pour this over the egg and tortilla mix, allow the tortillas to absorb the salsa and become one big eggy, tomatoey, tortilla-y mess of deliciousness. Should really have sour cream and frijoles refritos, but I didn't have those.

From my walk this evening:

4 hours ago, action said:

the common characteristic of these people, which I admire in all of them, is that they are all self-made men. determined, hard working people.

in the absence of any meaningfull altruistic sentiments in society in general, hard work is the only thing left that keeps it all together.

Hard work, fuels the economy and keeps you happy on a personal level.

I don't know many hard working people who have depression. Only depressed people I know are sitting on their lazy bums in the sofa, moaning and complaining.

When you work hard, you don't have time for depression.

if you have the attitude that you want to get everything in life for free, you won't get where these dudes are.

success in everything is about hard work, not about being a bum

 

The biggest lie of capitalism is that it's a meritocracy where your level of success is determined by how hard you work. The hardest-working people on the planet right now will almost certainly be some of the poorest. 

Also, your conclusions about hard work and depression really have no scientific basis, I'd politely ask you to reconsider them because the implications are pretty insulting to people who suffer from poor mental health - being told that their problems are down to laziness would definitely not be helpful.

On 15/05/2020 at 6:10 PM, spunko12345 said:

I reckon me and Graeme would get a stand alone volcano thread into three figures. Ever studied in Lanzarote Gra? I've been there but was too young to realise there were Volcs there. 

Well, we basically turned my 'Living in Other Countries' thread into 'The Volcano Thread', didn't we  ? I've never studied in Lanzarote, I went there three times as a kid, when I was 3, 5 and 10 years old and I was -obsessed- with volcanoes at all those ages, but my parents kinda have a thing where they don't really like guided tours on holiday, they like to have the independence to see things at their own pace, and since all the trips to Timanfaya National Park (where the currently active Timanfaya volcano is located) were guided bus tours, they never took me! I didn't see my first active volcano up close until I was 21! Technically pretty much the whole island of Lanzarote is volcanic, so just by being on it, you're standing on top of a volcanic structure that breached the surface of the sea, you can look around and see you're surrounded by lava, ash and volcanic landforms, but when you're a wee yin, you really want the steam coming out of the ground at the active crater to feel like you've 'properly' been to the volcano.

Today's the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, mentioned in the previous post I made. Imagine you're hiking and look across at the nearly 10,000 foot tall mountain opposite the one you're on, and see this...

This seemed strangely relevant:

Could have been "Lyin'"...

5 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Well why didn't you just say, ''give it a rest''? 

Because 'gie it a bye' is a common Scots expression that means much the same thing and I decided, on this occasion, to write it the way I would have said it out loud - perhaps as a further indication of my belief in Scotland's right to do things differently or perhaps just because I like it. It's more lighthearted than "give it a rest".

5 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

I honestly have no idea what this means.

"Give it a rest".

12 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

I am not overawed with the government's handling of corona myself but I do not have any comprehension problems with understanding the new policy and the language used (''stay alert'') therein: it is reasonably comprehensible unless you happen to be Sturgeon - Krankie using corona to drive a wedge in the union is utterly dire. 

 

Gie it a bye, she's perfectly entitled to take a different approach if she feels that the UK government are handling this about as well as the Mayor in Jaws - i.e. more concerned about the economy than the survival of their citizens. The governments of Wales and Northern Ireland (neither of which are seeking independence) have also chosen to continue in complete lockdown, much the same vein as Scotland, so it could just be that the UK government are making stupid and reckless decisions for England and the sensible choice would be not to replicate that.

It's amazing to think how controversial rock n' roll was in American society at the time. For those early guys, even just breaking through the social barriers to be heard was an incredible achievement - what was seen as subversive and distasteful by many traditional institutions at the time has now become a revered tradition in and of itself, recognised for being innovative, raucous and joyful.

Rest in peace, Little Richard.

Holy shit this song is great, I love all the beautiful sparkly melody lines and the atmosphere they create when contrasted with the darkness of the rhythm section like stars in the blackness. I really wish he'd been given creative licence in Guns N' Roses. I would have been all aboard for these kind of instrumentals meshed with Axl Rose songwriting and vocal delivery. 

A few pages back, I made a post wondering how the US would handle this pandemic's challenge to its individualist "everyone must work to survive" ethos. The answer is that it can't even tolerate suspending it for a short period of time.

2 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

Starting to think anti-Trumpism is as much of a disease as Corona. 

Criticising someone who is blatantly a complete idiot (and so arrogant as to be completely incapable of acknowledging, much less addressing his own failures) is a bad thing?

1 hour ago, SoulMonster said:

You call it European bacon? I call it English bacon. Our bacon does not look like that. Ours look more like American bacon. And if they tell you yours taste better they are just being polite

Umm, well I thought it had Scandinavian roots actually. For years when I was a child, one of the highest-quality versions of that cut of bacon (back bacon) you could buy was Danish - all the grown-ups I knew talked in glowing terms about Danish bacon (the brand was called Tulip). Maybe it's less popular now that people are a bit more conscious about buying locally. 

Disappointed that you call it English bacon though, there's really good (back) bacon comes from my part of Scotland too  . 

Also, they definitely weren't just being polite, it was an "Oh my god, why don't we have this!?" kind of reaction. 

On 26/04/2020 at 4:04 PM, soon said:

Y'alls bacon look weird. Looks like smoked salmon. Fats not rendered. No colour. Weird shapes. Like, wtf is that?? 1.5/10

 

European bacon > North American bacon. Pretty much every visitor I've had from NA agrees. 

Fun (debatably) fact: I registered on this forum with a Waitrose email account  .  

Back in the 56 k modem days, my parents had no idea about this newfangled internet business and when they were looking to "get online" they were speaking to my great aunt and uncle who live in the south of England. They had Waitrose as their ISP and set my folks up through it - so despite the fact it was a supermarket that we'd never heard of, with no stores in Scotland, we were collectively "@waitrose.com" for a few years.

2 hours ago, Oldest Goat said:

Are you familiar with the term 'white knights'?

"Saying someone is "white knighting" is an accusation that they are inserting themselves into an argument or situation for the sole purpose of trying to look good and win points with people."

These feeble creatures can never, ever, ever get pussy - ever, even from feminists they suckup to lol. So any chance they get they do this pathetic song and dance where they desperately try to bolster their sterile withered masculinity. They have nothing to offer. Zero game. Despite this being excruciatingly obvious to literally everyone they fantasize they're not actually pathetic, they're just misunderstood because of how 'evolved' and 'woke' and above real men they are. Delusional parasitic hypocrites. Like incels but less honest.

Dude, where did -that- topical detour come from  ?

42 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Surely rock formations (igneous rock etc) and the earth's plates is geology? 

Well, think of geomorphology as a sort of interface between geology and physical geography - like a venn diagram, if that helps. Geology is the study of the minerals and rocks that make up the earth and how they came to be - physical geography is more about the landforms comprised of those rocks and minerals, their distribution over the surface of the Earth and their interaction with other natural systems. If you bring in the human element and study the interaction between natural and social phenomena, that's environmental geography and if you move over into studying the spatial aspects of social phenomena, then that's human geography. I've always tried to keep myself in the middle ground (i.e. environmental geography) because I think that's where geography really shines, and what really interests me. 

6 hours ago, action said:

did you encounter flat earthers there, by chance? 

Thankfully never met one of those in real life. It's such a stupid conspiracy  nobody actually gains anything through the apparent hoodwinking of the population into thinking the Earth is round, and you'd have to induct so many people into 'the know', not just scientists and government employees, but airline pilots and merchant sailors... What would the point even be?

4 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

Can you explain to me why geography in British schools is not actually geography? 

I guess it would help to know what you believe geography to be. Geography (as I was taught it at school and uni) is a pretty broad subject that encompasses everything from the shape of the land to what is done on it. That's why it brings together many specialisms like geomorphology, hydrology, glaciology, land and resource management, global geopolitics, political ecology, culture studies, meteorology, historical geography and more besides. It's about studying the links between physical and social phenomena on the surface of the earth. Sometimes it's a bit prone to  navel-gazing identity crises because it's not a 'pure' discipline like mathematics, geology or economics - but I think it's the richer for that.

10 hours ago, Dazey said:

To be honest with you (and make a note of this because you'll never see me say it again ) I really quite regret not taking history at GCSE. I've actually considered doing some kind of night school or online course or something but I'm absolutely useless at written assignments. Science is easy because you only have to know if it's right or wrong. I'm fucking shit when you've got all these grey areas and you actually have to think about something.  

I'm definitely the opposite kind of researcher/analyst to you. I did Geography at undergrad level and pretty much all the assessment was long-form, which suited me down to the ground, but there was one module I did which was run by the Earth Sciences half of the department, and for this module you had Geographers and Earth Scientists in together. I think because they had Geography students in, they decided to experiment with the form of assessment and gave us out a coursework assignment with a more discursive style - the Geographers in the class did pretty well and the Earth Scientists didn't (I got an A) then the exam was set and we were told it was going to be three essay questions - the Earth Science students complained and they changed the style of the exam to short form with two days to go. I've never felt as stupid and useless and out of my depth in my life as I did in that exam hall that day  absolutely bombed it and my grade for the coursework assignment was the only thing that saved me.

Doing my PhD was interesting because it was bringing together the physical science of volcanology with the post-structural disciplines of social geography and history, so I had to make sure that my writing style was something that spoke to both natural and social scientists, and that the physical science I was presenting was accurate. You'd have hated writing it though, it finished up at about 90,000 words  . 

4 hours ago, Ratam said:

Me too know you are great joker 😀

No te preocupes, conozco muy bien a ese pendejo, hemos sido grandes amigos desde hace casi 10 años .

4 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Was his betrothed a cheeseburger?  

Joke's on you, I don't like cheese.

Living in a rural part of the west coast of Scotland definitely helps combat quarantine cabin fever.