ThatBoyRonaldo

Set my alarm early as had an unexpected day off and fancied a hill walk. Spent over an hour tearing up the house looking for my boots before remembering I'd lent them to my cousin months ago for a job interview where he was going to be climbing telegraph poles or something. By the time I got them it was about 10.30 so no big day really possible without a late finish, so went up Ben Chonzie. Was lucky to get the last parking space that wouldn't have necessitated using a passing place or some creative use of space, which seems wild for a Monday. Must have been 40-50 cars there. About 3 hours up and down, quite enjoyed it. Good path most of the way, but I do dislike ones where you do all the climbing then have a longish walk along a plateau before you get to the actual summit. Overall a good day - I haven't done many mountain climbs tbf and those I have done are largely the mega popular ones like Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers etc but was pleasantly surprised given the chat I've seen from some people about it being a boring one.

Rodrigo y Gabriela, Barrowlands, 2006 maybe? This was the early days of Youtube and our sound music teacher showed a few of us these guys on it and it was like nothing we'd ever seen. He organised it through the school, took 5/6 of us through on the train, told us to meet him at the bar at the end and left us to our own devices for the night. Good guy.

As far as I'm concerned the only true crime when it comes to pasta is when people absolutely drown it in sauce, of whatever kind. The sauce should just coat the pasta rather than drench it and allow you to taste the pasta itself as well.

The annoying thing about the SNP at the moment is that outside of the FM, there are basically 2 indentifiable wings of the party and both are bad. You've got the ones who love to think of themselves as sensible centrists like Angus Robertson, Alyn Smith and Stewart McDonald etc, and the headbangers like Joanna Cherry and Kenny MacAskill, who have a point in that the leadership could stand to be a bit more radical, but who also are too invested in stuff like the Salmond trial and being against the GRA to really take seriously. I think the Salmond trial and rise of Cherry to prominence has made the leadership realise they had a succession planning problem. The FM looks unassailable for now but things can change quickly and when you look at who's in Holyrood it's fairly slim pickings. Swinney's had his chance, there was the unpleasantness with Mackay, likes of Yousaf and Forbes are probably too young and folk like Mike Russell are too old. In that context it's hard not to see Robertson as jumping to the head of the queue if he wins the seat. I thought the party would move more explicitly left after 2014 but looking at that list of candidates it's a hard argument to make. If we wind up winning independence under Sturgeon then I suppose that will toss everything up in the air though.

Correct. I get that people may have other ways of measuring who's 'worst' but Bush directly caused several orders of magnitude more deaths.

Let's not traduce the Sambas here lads.

Go on then dorlomin, what do you think caused Trump. References to caged baboons optional.

Isn't the thing with Dornan that he announced he was stepping down then changed his mind after the deadline for doing so. It does seem a bit shan on him tbf.

Someone on here once made the point that over a 50 mile distance the difference between 70 and 80 mph is about 4 minutes. Always remember that when I'm tempted to speed - in the scheme of things it makes f**k all difference.

My issue with Cherry is less to do with the trans rights stuff, despite the fact that she has made her opinion (which I disagree with) clear on that in an indirect fashion. It's more to do with her repeated attempts to 1) make trouble for the FM by making clear via the press etc that she wants to be leader and disagrees with her policies and 2) use veiled and unveiled threats of legal action against political opponents both within and outwith her party. You would have thought there was something in some kind of code of conduct for QCs that would prevent that kind of thing as it effectively amounts to intimidation imo.

The problem with this is that the imitation never quite matches up to the real thing. It's like the times when you can tell a staffer has composed some of Trump's tweets - they're using the right words etc but there's something about the syntax that just can't be replicated.

Truly frightening how for so many people the answer is just to turn the clock back to 2016. Biden will benefit from this understandable desire and likely win but long run its an insane strategy imo.

I kind of take the view that maybe we shouldn't expect too much of columnists since it's ludicrous in the first place that we pay people to have a different opinion every week. I certainly don't think it's a job I could do well - but Farquharson in particular just sets something off in me where it's just nuts to me that this guy is paid to have invariably wrong and bad opinions about politics. Of the three you've mentioned, at least Deerin is fairly transparent about his opinions and agenda, and at least Gordon is an actual reporter.

'Why Murdo Fraser's new Scottish Conservatives might finally be ready for government' 'Why Miles Briggs might just be the man to take the fight to Nicola Sturgeon' 'Why Alexander Burnett could well be the candidate who can unite the party, save the Union and open a portal to the underworld' The takes write themselves!

I've been rewatching the Simpsons over the past few months and last week got on to the episode Gervais wrote back in 2006 or so recently. I remembered not liking it at the time but I was blown away at how bad it was, absolutely awful. Easily the worst so far, just not funny at all. The man's done nothing good since Extras and even looking back that's a bit ropey. A lot of his work since then just comes across as either unnecessarily cruel, or just Gervais spouting his own opinions with barely even the pretence of a character laid over them. The Terrace podcast did a good hatchet job on him on one of their lockdown episodes, would recommend it. It is truly amazing he's still getting work imo.