In the news

feels weird to singlehandedly be the only person not ruining the forum atm.

Keeps your other hand free.

I used to play the same game replacing heart with arse in song lyrics

Unbreak my arse
Last Christmas I gave you my arse, the very next day you gave it away
You can’t break my arse, my achey breaky arse
Sergeant Peppers Lonely Arse Club
Etc etc

Ha!

I did this with hymns and "bum". Lord of the dancebum was a good one.

LFWSS

Forum entropy innit? They all end up like this. Once the "Let's count to a Million" thread is started, along with the "Let's count down from a Million quicker than the 'Let's count to a Million' thread counts up" thread too the forum will self destruct, and the LFGSS book will finally go to print, free Summer Cap with the first 100 orders.

1

This thread was already mostly wank. The remarkable things in the news discusswd here were only about british politics. Isn't there another thread for that?

https://deepseanews.com/tag/giant-isopods/

Bookmark this for the latest on giant isopods

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00185-z

Moon time news

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/31/rap-music-young-men-fail-lyrics-conviction

How lyrics are influencing convictions

There is a long history of this in the US. I can't remember the details but I think there was a famous case in the 80s where rap lyrics were used to support a conviction, potentially of rape or assault?

There's been quite a few - Bobby Schmurder and TayK especially stand out. There's a fascinating YouTube channel by a guy called TrapLoreRoss which pulls out a lot of the info behind those kinds of situations which is well worth a watch if you're interested.

I think the key thing is that in a lot of those videos the rappers are unashamedly gang affiliated, and clearly and obviously referring to actual crimes which the police were already investigating. The lyrics name times and places and people. It'd be insane not to include that in corroborating evidence, though I agree it wouldn't be enough on its own.

This guy seems to be saying that rappers speak in metaphor and braggadocio, which is true. No-one thinks the guy from Cypress Hill is really out there killing people. Guns and murder are metaphors for power. Even a lot of the trap stuff has more of the theatre than the reality to it.

But something significant did change with the drill stuff. With a lot of that stuff, the music was secondary to the gang activity. And a lot of that made it to the UK too
.

I don't tihnk there's anything wrong with using lyrics as corroborating evidence if they have hard evidence to back it up.

“Rap snitches, telling all their business
Sit in the court and be their own star witness
Do you see the perpetrator? Yeah, I'm right here”

Shout out MF DOOM, still missed.

See also a much clumsier Jeru the Damaja: "make em bounce to this 'fake pimp'-free flow / I never knew hustlers confessed in stereo"

Same shit happened with grime back in the day that I see with some drill rappers. Music videos getting taken down, shows shut down.

Biggie was giving out practical advice on successful crack dealing "bad boys move in silence", and the kids these days just self snitching.

Ten crack commandments was goddam scripture.

475,000: Approximate number of workers expected to go on strike on Wednesday – the single biggest day of industrial action for more than a decade.

Toots horn in support.

✊

Good news continues to filter through on energy

The Whitehall financial watchdog had predicted the government could lose up to £6.5bn as a result of Bulb’s 2021 failure, which prompted one of the largest state rescues of a business since the financial crisis. But Stuart Jackson, chief financial officer and a co-founder of Octopus, said on Wednesday that the company had estimated the payback meant the cost to taxpayers would be just £260mn.

https://www.ft.com/content/d77c3c89-fc79-4bc4-a012-c8bed968b66a

Not totally up on the situation but one imagines Andrew Tate’s lawyer might have a rather tricky time should it make court, with so many media snippets.

Cheers, many a blue flag was waved in thanks.

Two sneery head shakes both came from BMW drivers...

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1620690774747668483

Man who resents his own wife striking calls into LBC.

On the Pacific Cost Highway, driver hits cyclist from behind, knocking them down (apparently accidentally). Driver so irate that they then get out of the car and stab the victim. Cyclist has since died.