What happened today that neither pissed you off nor made you happy but is nevertheless noteworthy?

You guys should watch The Social Dilemma, excellent movie. Might help, though some of you seem to be fubar or at least very close to it.
 
You guys should watch The Social Dilemma, excellent movie. Might help, though some of you seem to be fubar or at least very close to it.

I did. I didn't understand the part where people were hooked on Recommendations by the app. I rarely if ever tap on anything recommended by social media. I either look at my own content, look for my friends or search for a specific item. Why would some AI know anything about what I would like?

Also Vincent Karthieser must be out of work these days.
 
I did. I didn't understand the part where people were hooked on Recommendations by the app. I rarely if ever tap on anything recommended by social media. I either look at my own content, look for my friends or search for a specific item. Why would some AI know anything about what I would like?

Also Vincent Karthieser must be out of work these days.
I have basically no experience with social media, so I don't know. But I think they explained it quite well: The users not understanding how the whole thing works is part of why it works so well (although it even works when you do understand). Since you are among the high-risk population AND demonstrate a lack of understanding, maybe consider at least to implement their suggestions like turning off notifications etc.
 
I have basically no experience with social media, so I don't know. But I think they explained it quite well: The users not understanding how the whole thing works is part of why it works so well (although it even works when you do understand). Since you are among the high-risk population AND demonstrate a lack of understanding, maybe consider at least to implement their suggestions like turning off notifications etc.

I have all these notifications pile up but I ignore all of them. My iPad is the worse. The kid who got notified that his ex was with someone. She's an ex. Do I bloody care? Hence I just junk all the notifications when I turn on my iPad. I'll notify myself of anything I deem worthy.
 
yeah I guess all of this just doesn't apply to a (potential) insurance man of the year!
 
I have zero attention span but it's because of something else.
 
But I get happy when I am notified people like my stuff. It's an affirmation on me.

I get sad and depressed and delete the post if no one likes it.

This is precisely why it's bad, Fwiff!

If you're affected by social media in that way, it's time to get off social media.
 
Facebook is good for keeping up with those distant friends and family who you would otherwise have no contact with. Baby pictures, announcements, etc.

There are a few good professional discussion groups but the format isn’t really suited to it. It used to work as a decent news aggregator until they changed the feed algorithm.

Now I’d say I mostly use it for a five minute blast of memes and humor with my morning coffee.
 
This is precisely why it's bad, Fwiff!

If you're affected by social media in that way, it's time to get off social media.
But I'm just comparing to myself. I'm not comparing to others.

It's the same with my mobile phone. If it blinks I am happy - people remember me. Whether I respond or not is my prerogative though.
 
Yesterday I was at my favourite cheese monger in the market waiting for them to cut up some cheese for me. An older gent with a WASP like accent comes up and asks, "What kind of cheese goes with veal parmigiana?" Due to the masks and plexiglass he had to repeat his question, "I'm making veal parmigiana tonight. What's the best cheese to go with it?"

Maybe the next stop for him was the butcher and asking which animal meat he should buy for veal parmigiana.
 
I've had tooth implant surgery yesterday that involved a lot more than I expected i.e. bone harvesting, grafts and a lot of stitching. My face is battered, blue and yellow with a black eye. My lips look like I've had implants all gone wrong. What a mess. I've had a quite a few surgeries and this up there in my league table.

My Mum and Missus waded in saying it's self-inflicted and my Missus said at least you can pretend you've had a facial surgery which must carry some status amongst the Russian speaking diaspora. Then my Mum said I can't wait to tell your sister.
 
I've had tooth implant surgery yesterday that involved a lot more than I expected i.e. bone harvesting, grafts and a lot of stitching. My face is battered, blue and yellow with a black eye. My lips look like I've had implants all gone wrong. What a mess. I've had a quite a few surgeries and this up there in my league table.

My Mum and Missus waded in saying it's self-inflicted and my Missus said at least you can pretend you've had a facial surgery which must carry some status amongst the Russian speaking diaspora. Then my Mum said I can't wait to tell your sister.
sorry to hear about that. i've heard bone harvesting is a real bitch. what's the prognosis for a successful outcome?
 
sorry to hear about that. i've heard bone harvesting is a real bitch. what's the prognosis for a successful outcome?
100% I hope, especially as it's purely aesthetic. I've had bone harvesting before for my neck cages, so I'm no stranger to it. The difference is, when I came home from that operation, I had two weeks worth of morphine and my face was perfect. I've come home with a load of antibiotics and an instruction you can take a Paracetamol tonight. So I've taken Russian Standard instead.

I've had bad teeth in terms of gaps and ones that never grew since my second teeth. But back then, it being England, the dental treatment was still poor and provided by butchers who made their money by mercury fillings you didn't need. When I was 18 one of the dentists inquired did I want braces as I could still get it on the NHS as a student. But what self respecting Joe Strummer and Shane MacGowan acolyte would have done that?

What passes for character when your 18, looks horrendous on the middle aged dude.
 
sorry to hear about that. i've heard bone harvesting is a real bitch. what's the prognosis for a successful outcome?
what the fuck is wrong with cadaver bone? If done by a competent practitioner using a proven system, one a healthy (especially non-smoker) and compliant patient, the success rate of implants with and without bone grafting is 90%+
 
what the fuck is wrong with cadaver bone? If done by a competent practitioner using a proven system, one a healthy (especially non-smoker) and compliant patient, the success rate of implants with and without bone grafting is 90%+

Think Rambo's referring to when they took bone grafts from the hip?

It seems common to sense to me, that you would take the bone from the local area that you've just removed, but clearly there was a reason for this in the not too distant past?

I know for my neck operation they use to harvest from the hip which was problematic. I also read that they used cadavers instead. Pretty much sure what I had wasn't my hips or someone else's and was my removed vertebrae ground with some super-duper A type blood.

At least I hope so.
 
what the fuck is wrong with cadaver bone? If done by a competent practitioner using a proven system, one a healthy (especially non-smoker) and compliant patient, the success rate of implants with and without bone grafting is 90%+
no clue. i just know a few people who have had it done and they had a rough time with it. the "competent practitioner" part of your explanation is where i'd guess the majority of the hangups occur.
 
no clue. i just know a few people who have had it done and they had a rough time with it. the "competent practitioner" part of your explanation is where i'd guess the majority of the hangups occur.

my point was cadaver bone is just fine for implants with or without fibrin-rich platelet use.

the competency hang up is less about the placement and more about patient selection. Placing implants in a patient who should be screened out is the #1 fuckup followed by being a ham-fisted wanker
 
my point was cadaver bone is just fine for implants with or without fibrin-rich platelet use.

Are there any issues with rejection? Or does the platelet use overcome that? Or is rejection not an issue because bone is hard, not soft, tissue?
 
Are there any issues with rejection? Or does the platelet use overcome that? Or is rejection not an issue because bone is hard, not soft, tissue?
No, rejection is not often a thing. Most failures are due to infections initially after placement or later when the implant should be osseous-integrated.
 
Clearly, that Informed Consent form was there for a reason. My face is still swollen with a black eye and I'm 100% unfit for active duty. My brain feels like mush and physically knackered. Like when you've got really bad sinusitis or the flu.

Just want a hot toddy and to get to bed and sleep the old Night Nurse formula 12-14 hours. Repeat for a couple of days and then wake up with a clear head and a new, brighter dawn awaiting.
 
If I say this is not a conspiracy theory will more people think it is? Does me denying it being conspiracy make it worse?

So Justin pivoted from COVID to the firearms ban, announcing the choice of a buy back, most likely at a loss, or the promise that you can keep it if you never load it, fire it or transport it and only look at it. Safely. He laid the responsibility for banning hand guns on municipalities. So bye-bye handguns for recreational shooters in Toronto and Vancouver. Saskatoon will make everyone buy one. It's been 9 months since the ban was announced and the anniversary of the Nova Scotia massacre is in April. Curious timing of the anouncement, eh?

Of course the pivot was to draw attention away from Canada being second from the bottom of all OECD countries in its immunization rate. It makes sense now as this is the second boot to drop to focus Canadian's attention away from realizing their country has shit the bed on vaccines. India has already said they won't help a Canadian brother out if asked probably because of the Sikh terrorist in charge of the socialists in Ottawa not to mention he is a friend of porn singer Rhianna. I'm not making this up, I read it in the Indian papers.

The first boot was the government charging those entering Canada by air $2,000 for for a saran wrapped room at budget hotel/motel isolation of the government's choosing. The prevailing legal opinion is that it is unconstitutional and the government would have known that going in. Misdirection for the masses. A suit has been launched to challenge it. Plus vehicular entry will require a negative test no older than 72 hours. Sure, clamp down the border, sorta, kinda, not really, but late don't you think. The cheese cloth defence™. The variants already flew in.

How blatant this is isn't even the worst part of it. It was Trudeau's hubris early on including Canada's capacity to successfully invent a vaccine, which fizzled and we'd have to send it offshore to have it made anyway.

This is bush league.
 
I had 3 cigarettes today before the queue of people trying to get a lift to go up and go home subsided. I went in when there were only 2 ahead of me. 1 young lady came down and went to the concierge to pick up a box. We have 4 lifts. She returned to the queue behind me. The lift opened next to her and she was about to go in but noticed I was ahead of her so I went in and waved her to "come on in" .

I pressed my floor and asked what floor since her hands were preoccupied with the box. "Oh we're neighbours!"

"I don't know. I'd remember someone looking like you if you were next door."
 
Got a call from old work chum yesterday. He had a barn conversion, some land and another property in Bordeaux. Sounds good, but he never liked French wine and was always slagging it off. He liked Cognac mind you. He was always inviting us down when the kids were younger. Well, it's a long drive down to Bordeaux and I think couples without kids don't mix well over a days with those of us who do have kids. I also had a sneaky suspicion he was looking to promote one of his properties to sell to us.

Anyway, much as happened. He's back in Blighty, his wife is a Scot and they moved back just north of the border. He had an accident with one of those elasticated rope and hook things whilst messing about with a trailer, it broke and the hook hit him in the eye and skull. It destroyed his right eye and damaged his skull. He ended up with four operations and is totally blind in his right eye and his left eye sight is deteriorating. They decided to sell up and go back to the UK. They were worried that if anything happened to one of them, the other would be alone in France without family.

I get that, as a quirk of fate all of my family brothers and sisters, and some extended family members remain all on the Wirral. It's a good place to live with some exceptions, including the climate, which really sucks. My kids would move there tomorrow and my missus would if we could earn what we earn now over there. But life doesn't work like that. We're stuck here, my wife's got a tax free position now and the next career step for her would be in Brussels. But I do get why some expats return after many decades abroad, there's something about England that is essential. My kids sense it and it's in their blood.
 
From what I’ve seen, a lot of expats return after a few decades, only to be unhappy because the place has changed so much and so have they.

I’d never admit it anywhere else, but I’m afraid I might be like that if I went home now.
 
From what I’ve seen, a lot of expats return after a few decades, only to be unhappy because the place has changed so much and so have they.

I’d never admit it anywhere else, but I’m afraid I might be like that if I went home now.
You can never go home again...

That much is true, there's two reasons I left the UK: I could earn much more abroad and the climate in the NW of England which is damp and winter most of the year. The climate in the Netherlands, although the Dutch slag it off, is much better. Summers, pretty much guaranteed as the continental climate kicks in for several weeks. The downside is the mosquitos which are tropical in intensity.
 
Got another phone call from an ex-colleague today. I was going to call him up yesterday, but got waylaid. Monday he's going in for a big cancer operation kidneys and elsewhere, sounds dreadful. He'll be in hospital for 4 days afterwards. If they're keeping you in that long these days, it's bad. His voice faltered a couple of times.

He's had a good career, got the fancy younger second wife with no kids and has maintained an enviable lifestyle of good restaurants almost every night and top holiday destinations. You can have all of that, but you can still come a cropper. Also with Covid, but he's got a very decent pad too.

As it happens, he was mulling it over yesterday pounding the streets and some massive fat dude stops next to him on a Vespa. Well, it's my arch-nemesis. He said you wouldn't recognize him, he's that fat, and even he knew that and had reintroduce himself. I do know his nick-name now is FLUF (Fat, Lazy, Useless, Fuck). Except, despite all of that he was boasting about the 6 million profit he made on Nordstream running the scams and dodgy added manpower agencies for the Russians, Italians and the Filipino director for one of the EPC's based here in Delft. This whilst working on the project and what would be a clear conflict of interest.

I'd heard he was back in The Hague, but didn't quite believe it. He's domiciled in Gibraltar. So I asked my mucca where was he living in The Hague, to which he informed me that as I had a wife, family and good job he wasn't going to tell me, as he knew I would seek him out and likely do something detrimental to all of my good standing and freedom. I wouldn't do that now, in the past yes, but knowing he is a bloated, fat fuck is good enough for me.
 
Someone in my building has it. First one who declared it. I'm sure there have been many who didn't bother to.
 

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