rwtwm

What was the Sheriff of Nottingham doing in St Albans?

I think a lot of people in this thread are overstating the suspicion of outsiders. International trade has existed for thousands of years. There was even limited tourism in the middle ages. It would be rare to encounter people that you couldn't communicate with, but I don't think you'd be automatically sacrificed.

I'm in London, so would fare better than most as they would definitely be familiar with outsiders. That said people in many of the old European cities would likely be able to blag their way to local universities. Oxford definitely already existed 650 years ago so I'd start by heading there.

I think all scholarly writing was in Latin at the time, so I'd need somebody to translate, but (with luck) I could move maths on a couple of hundred years. I reckon I could get basic electricity going too. Obviously the more you said upfront the more suspicious people would be, but if you drip-fed knowledge over a few years, trying to let the steps rest upon each other you could probably share a lot of what we know today.

Isn't that a 'necessary but not sufficient' condition though? I'm thinking principally of the struggles in Zimbabwe here.

It's been 15 years and I'm still not sure if MMT is an accurate description of Economics, a persuasive analogy, or convincing bunkum.

I love how memes (in the Dawkinsian sense) work. Lots of people have enjoyed this, but I can imagine this being quoted as the original is lost to the sands of time.

Young people everywhere thinking that Aquaman was someone who just bought failing assets from everyone.

I know this is a joke thread, but I think this is a great example of a poorly designed survey question that charitable people would say 'generates discussion'. I would say it enables confirmation bias and just creates animosity amongst people looking for reasons to dislike an imaginary other.

My instinct when I first saw reporting of this was, yeah I probably could. But that's because I read the question as me being able to play until I won a point. If I even won one, even by a double fault, I win. When I said as much on social media people jumped on me. But here's the thing, I think theres like a 99.8% chance that the world's best Female tennis player wins any given point against me. I'm just expecting one shanked return from 500 efforts.

Then uproar. Because it's only because she's a woman. Except... Well there isn't an equivalent question for Novak Djokovic! So people are jumping to conclude reasoning, and YouGov is formenting that by reporting on a shoddy question with no control to give us a benchmark. For the record I think on average I'd have to wait longer to win a point against the worlds best male tennis player, because they serve so much faster, but I don't think I'd be waiting forever.

So people read the question and assume both that the question refers to a one point shoot out, and they already think the greater portion of men are misogynists. Well then that's the explanation! It cannot be an ambiguous question interpreted differently!

And I'm not denying that for some people the worst explanation is unfortunately the correct one. But I do have an issue with people dismissing or ignoring fairly rational objections to the survey or interpretations of it because of their pre-existing biases.

Not true either, someone has linked the survey question above 12% of men said yes, 3% of women

I've just gone and copied the wording from the link...

Do you think if you were playing your very best tennis, you could win a point off Serena Williams?

if Beethoven had been a Nazi, it wouldn’t take away from his work.

It would have made him more impressive in my eyes, as he would have had to have been able to see the future, or time travel!

New clothes, often Uniqlo is my first stop. But more and more I go to Vinted and Charity stores for anything that isn't sportswear.

There was a period in my life when I had to remind people frequently that NoSQL stood for 'not only SQL'.

Cowardly from Keir’s Labour

That's seems to be a theme. I thought I would be underwhelmed by this government, but at least thankful for a period of sensible leadership who understood the benefit of a strong public sector.

Actually I'm more than disappointed. Cowardice is their watchword. Cowardly hiding from the right wing media, from US authoritarianism, from market fundamentalists. We'll get Reform next at this rate, because we'll be encouraged to give up by astroturfers who will similarly be whipping the rarely engaged into a frenzy.