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Please do not write below the line

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Re: Please do not write below the line

#331

Post by eszed »

immibis wrote: post #80
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

It's a tax but for some reason making it separate from the normal tax system makes it harder for the government to force political views on it... even though the government could easily pass a law saying "the board of directors of the BBC shall go to jail unless all reporting favours the Tories"

I think that's actually a reasonable point of view. The Brits I know have a feeling of ownership towards the BBC that they don't towards other public affordances.

...Apart from the NHS, that is. Which hardly prevented the Tories from sabotaging it for private profit.

Maybe the Conservatives (or their donors) didn't care quite as much about the Beeb? There's not a lot of money in it, and the gestures they did make towards it seemed to keep it from exposing too many of their other "projects", or maybe it was toothless all along. I dunno.

Still, it's an excellent broadcaster - still, in my opinion, the gold-standard in the English-speaking world - even if (perhaps) diminished from what it once was.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#332

Post by authorfly »

stronglikedan wrote: post #42
authorfly wrote: post #9

"Please do not park next to our nondescript White Van" would suite just as much.

They don't use non-descript vans. They want you to know who they are. Now, whether the vans can actually detect anything is a different matter. Some believe they are just a visual deterrent, and don't actually do anything beyond looking scary.

The point is they have as much to gain from encouraging people to believe they actively use "TV scanners" and you can't know when they are about with their vans as saying nothing.

Cynically it gets your auntie talking, brings TV license to front of mind.

It's doubtful they ever actually did such a thing.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#333

Post by wyiske »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry. There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for th…

Unfortunately this is no longer true. The quality of the journalism is in serious doubt. One such example: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-myth-of-the-stolen-c...

In addition many articles focus on individuals which offer a skewed perspective. I stopped using the bbc news app after noticing I was only occasionally enjoying the long reads, and even then I don’t want woke politics snuck in

Re: Please do not write below the line

#334

Post by op00to »

jkestner wrote: post #296
op00to wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your jacket deserves justice! I left a post it note above a doorway in an old office about 15 years ago on my last day. I ask friends who still work there and it’s still there today!

Kudos to 3M for that adhesive!

i was amazed!

Re: Please do not write below the line

#335

Post by jadtz »

ryandrake wrote: post #178
cal85 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me. (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by law of public authorities.)

Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.

Reading their replies felt awfully similar to how LLMs get stuck in loops, repeating the same patterns over and over.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#336

Post by xp84 »

PcChip wrote: post #297
xp84 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coat rack story: I once bought a cheap wood coat rack at the drugstore for $5 or so and brought it into the office to place at our "pod" of desks as only a few coatracks had existed in that office. Later that office was being closed down to move into a smaller building and all or most of the office furniture besides the desks (cubes would imply actual walls) was priced to be sold to anyone who wanted it. I found my c…

>I found my coatrack moved to that sale area and marked $20. (I just stole it back.) how many times have you gone through the potential argument with them in your head?

Many! How did you know?

Re: Please do not write below the line

#337

Post by kulahan »

ozzmotik wrote: post #206
ryandrake wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.

this is, legitimately and without any exaggeration whatsoever, almost exactly how nearly everyone I speak to IRL as a homeless individual interacts with me. There are a few here and there that absolutely do make an attempt to have real discourse and actually discuss in context, but by an overwhelming majority, most of them just take the (to borrow from a response) SLM approach. life is exhausting sometimes

I assume they’re not really paying attention to you, like if you were a child vying for attention. You’re not likely to run into many salient points speaking to someone who isn’t tracking the basic things an adult should do.
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