Evidently Banderill has abandoned both ship and rightful place at the helm of it. This gives me the opportunity to have a rethink and go strictly on merit instead. Welcome your new overlord Stowie.
squint, damn you
"Let's have a moment of silence for all those who are stuck in traffic on the way to the gym to ride stationary bicycles."
As avatars go it needs improvement, but we have people for that.
While he hasn't been vetted for the abandonment of critical faculties that leads to cult membership* (we all have our standards), I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that score.
Stowie caught my attention with this post from the
War with Russia thread.
Well, firstly this is a political opinion board. It would be quite an empty place if we had to simply defer to expert opinions without commentary. Secondly, there has been much written about NATO expansion and its influence on Putin's actions from both opinions - I don't have to go far to read political and diplomatic experts that disagree with your opinion either. I could ask the same question back, but it doesn't really get us very far.
Your posts do challenge my opinions and thoughts, and I am glad for that...
It was enough to
which yielded
this:I have visited Brasilia. Not sure if it classed as brutalist or modernist or something else. It certainly has a lot of concrete.
There are definitely beautiful buildings. The Cathedral is simply wonderful. Outside it is a really sleek, almost anonymous design but inside you realise the whole roof is stained glass which is stunning. Niemeyer had a good day when he designed this structure.
The Court of Justice and Legislature buildings are beautiful in their own way. But, when I was there and looking at the buildings from the large concrete square in between the two buildings I noticed most people huddled together next to the only statue in this concrete plaza. Then I realised why. It was the only shade anywhere on the plaza and the sun was farking hot. I soon joined the huddle.
And that seems to be the problem with this phase of architecture. Brasilia felt like it had been designed by someone with a deep understanding of using concrete and steel as a form but had totally forgotten that Brasila is quite hot. The huge row of administrative buildings are built to be imposing and sleek, except the outside is now peppered with air conditioning units as a measure to try to keep the interior from turning into an oven. It looks like the buildings have sprouted warts. Vast empty spaces and the spread out nature of Brasilia means travel in anything other than a car is futile. A brutalist imagining of Milton Keynes.
I came away impressed by the buildings but wished that modernism / brutalism had discovered trees.
Not proof of anything other than that he can make a solidly interesting contribution without recourse to vexatious typography, formatting, or emoticons, but that already puts him ahead of the competition.
If Stowie is to be in charge, it would be nice to see if he has an opinion on the forum itself.
We're in luck.From reading language used by many on here towards others, it seems that any political language, no matter how personal or abusive you use is fine & justified & any language used yowards you by those of a different view is offensive and wrong. We will never have more grown up debates until we all look at our own behaviour critically.
There are two things here, I think. One aspect are the posters on this site, where keeping things civil has the advantage that it keeps the conversation going. And it is one thing to be critical or even abrupt with the comments or opinions of a poster and being personally abusive and aggressive. I might be lucky (or very forgetful) but can only remember one instance of the latter directed at me and it was so utterly bizarre that I truly wondered if the poster was having some kind of breakdown. Maybe I have rose-tinted glasses, but considering this board is quite well used, essentially anonymous, not moderated and covering some controversial subjects it does seem more civilised than a lot of online places. Maybe the anonymity actually works to make it better - quite difficult to become personal when there is limited personal information that is shared.
The other aspect is posting about people not on the board. There I freely admit to being slightly more abusive (OK, sometimes a lot more), although I do try to limit it to someone's words and actions rather than appearance or characteristics they cannot control. The thing is, I feel there is a difference depending on to whom it is directed. If, for example, I post a rare(!) attack on Johnson's latest jape I consider it "punching up". He has all the power and agency. On the other hand, referring disparagingly to those with little power or agency feels very different.
Not sure if this makes sense, or is indeed even a correct way of approaching it.
I'm not sure if it makes sense either, given that incivility is second nature on NACA, but in the spirit of moving this along I'm willing to stipulate it did last year when he posted that. As for punching in whichever direction, there's always going to be collateral damage to the atmosphere. Perhaps he will use his new power and agency to be a good influence.
Despite that I appear to have already signed off, let's take one more dive into his history.
What's this? *Have my words come back to haunt me so quickly?
After being told by a twenty-something that I had somewhat confused transgender and non-binary, I did some reading and realise why. I also realised that sex, gender, sexuality and identity seemed to have become a more open, but equally more complex tapestry than when I was a teenager; although I doubt things were much different then, just that I was simply less aware. Today's teenagers seem much more informed, open and accepting.
Do you understand the difference and do you feel society is more accepting of the differences now than when you were a teenager?
Do you know anywho who identifies as non-binary? Do you see how that choice impacts their day-to-day life and is it positive (creating informative discourse about gender and identity) or negative (people willfully refusing to accept their choice and "labelling" them anyway)?
Interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.
My daughter (13 and a bit) is far more clued up than me. It seems to be viewed as a natural part of life. Whereas growing up in the '90s it was even difficult for people to come out as gay.
I cannot profess to begin to understand the complexities of the issue around facilities or other contentious issues and therefore tend to stay away from commenting. As a middle aged white male, I accept my life experiences don't equip me to have any expertise in the issue.
I have only known a couple of trans people in my life. Both from work life, and it was clear in both cases that they had suffered both with internal mental struggles about who they were and externally with prejudice and abuse. It didn't seem like an easy route to navigate, so I am always a bit confused on the argument that allowing trans people into women's facilities would suddenly open the floodgates to lots of tattooed, hairy, straight alpha males donning female underwear to gain access. But I refer to my paragraph above. I have no experience from either category to make a reasoned argument either way.
I don't have the heart to take that apart piece by piece, but will suggest that ceding the conversation to children and the white men (many of them middle aged) who are more comfortable testing the boundaries of females than expanding the bandwidth of male isn't working out so well.
Suffice it to say I'm putting your appointment on hold until you at least read up on
this subject, Stowie. Who knows, your daughter may even end up thanking you for becoming an
informed parent, given the burgeoning number of girls fleeing biological reality and further diluting
their opportunities. If you've resisted the allure of those links, I've got one more coming up that may attract by virtue of its font size and the fact that it's a thread for beginners. Be warned that most of the contributors are women, and you know how biased
they can be when they get it in their heads that protecting their sex class is in some way important:
Break it down for me?Oh, and here's a very clued up nonbinary
human @10.30:
Spoiler
Well, some word with clue in it. As someone on the
Mumsnet thread about this put it:
"Either gender is a meaningless social construct (that Old People will never grasp), or it's the vital characteristic underpinning of all human identity that must never be challenged, but it can't be both. They claimed to be gender non-conforming, but by definition they absolutely ARE conforming – they're conforming into one of the new stereotype boxes that have been invented for them to conform into."
In happier news on this Friday the 13th, I was amused by
this on the Jubilee thread:
winjim: Somebody on our street's WhatsApp group has now suggested that we invite the next street over to our party. I'm not sure why we should accommodate that bunch of bastards, I might try and organise a jubilee punch up and chase them off. There's more of us, I reckon we could have them.
AuroraSaab: Surely it would be more in the Jubilee spirit to take the fight to them. Invade their street. Perhaps install one of your residents as a proxy ruler. Do they have any natural resources you can exploit? Anybody got a nice orchard or vegetable patch?
winjim: The allotments are further down the main road but we could use the residents as a source of labour. We need a flag don't we.
BoldonLad: Why fight them?, that is a bit 19th century, you could always make friendly overtures to them, then, forceably move anyone in your street, who you don’t like the look of, to their street.
winjim: As long as we can maintain control over the little bit that connects the two streets, the neighbourhood Strait if you will. For security reasons.
Poll