Post a controversial opinion

"some of you are saying 'oh, I quite like top gear'. The trouble is, I hate top gear, and I'm now going to explain why for 45 minutes."

hoped we were talking Sammy Lee diatribe tbh

marcos: my daughter's school dress code requires tucked-in shirts.

When they wrote it, I think they were thinking of a 10-year-old boy wearing a polo shirt or Redskins t-shirt. When he tucks his shirt into his jeans he looks okay.

Consider, however, a five-year-old girl wearing a tunic and leggings. If she tucks her tunic into her leggings she looks like a severely mangled sausage.

ha that's so weird, they don't have a uniform and can wear whatever they want but they have to tuck in their t-shirts?

I remember when I was a kid and we had no dress code, just kids who were ordered to go turn their t-shirts inside out because even if your dad got a cool t-shirt with all his marlboro bucks, no cigarette advertising at school, please

yeah our dress code was no alcohol/cigarette ads, nothing "offensive" or "sexually suggestive" (I recall "dolphin shorts" and halter tops being explicitly banned)

Dolphin shorts?

I went to a prep school and people wore khakis with dolphins, crabs, whales and other sea creatures on them all the time. Horrific.

i'm thinking there was some t-shirt brand that was outlawed for a while. i want to say "no fear" shirts, but probably because they really should have been banned

https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/9583461_f260.jpg

i think i remember some kid being told he could no longer wear the Metallica "METAL UP YOUR ASS" t-shirt but school admin was totally missing out on the dudes wearing L.A. Kings jackets with their gang name stitched on the back and their gang names (Hitman was one. Hitman!) stitched on the front. i thought they were wannabes but as it turned out they were actual gang affiliates.

Remember And-1 shirts? I had a friend who remembered the insults being far more extreme than they were.

And 1 and JNCO are my favorite brands of all time.

omg @ "Hitman"

co-ed naked beach volleyball it's a senior thing you wouldn't understand

omg coed naked, that was a banned shirt brand for sure

Coed Naked Analytic Geometry never caught on for some reason

coed naked vs senor frogs

salty dog cafe

anyway i am wearing a tucked-in t-shirt right now

I, to my great shame, have been to a senor frogs

it really does encapsulate everything a middle school kid thinks "partying" should be

did y'all have Big Johnson shirts. those were banned as were Bart Simpson shirts

yes, and yes

Spent many happy high school classes watching M the punk argue that being told to change his IF IT AIN'T STIFF, IT AIN'T WORTH A FUCK t-shirt was some kind of tradeucement of his civil rights.

About food again, is it a British thing and/or working class thing for food to be treated like a naughty luxury? (Dylan Moran has a bit on this)

I've puzzled over this a lot. Makes me think of old British kids comics in which food is frequently the goal of the story and they get it in a cheeky way then wink at the audience at the end.

Twice this week someone passed me while I was eating and they chuckled and said something about enjoying the food, as if I was up to some mischief.
Some people have gave me kinda dirty smiles about it or licked their lips and winked at me when I'm getting food.

Maybe it's mostly people who've been poor? If so that makes it less funny.

that's like the protestant ethic of allowing you the fruits of your success but not taking pleasure in them. can't look like you're enjoying the windfalls of your labor

or they're body-shaming you with the "eh, looks like you've already had enough to eat" implication, also rude

Believe me there is not much pleasure to be had from a Scottish diet.

lol

sounds like they're hitting on you, try to eat less sexily

now I'm picturing people having this reaction as I'm eating a munchie box on a park bench

'Naughty' is any sweet that's more elaborate than a digestive biscuit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBU-pzAmqcM

I'm not fat so I don't think they're body shaming me. I got this even when I was pretty skinny.

It seems almost like vicarious pleasure. I remember after I finished something an older guy I know really eagerly grinned and asked "Are you enjoying that! Are you enjoying that!"

https://youtu.be/IwlVa6i6Yg8?t=2078

"nipping for a cheeky nandos" is maybe related

Every time I visit any family or friends in Scotland they're ceaselessly offering biscuits, sandwiches or tea. Even after I refuse.

Is the culture just generally decadent or?

"you do not need to go to Switzerland ... Scottish chip shops provide an effective euthanasia service"

It'd be "You'll have had your tea?" in Edinburgh. (xp)

lol sounds about right Tom

st patrick's day is a garbage holiday

weather should be abolished

st patrick's day is a garbage holiday

uncontroversial

Space. Or, specifically, certain Americans' glurgey reverence for NASA, astronauts, the space program, the fucking Shuttle.

People who are otherwise level-headed, liberal-minded, skeptical, cynical, irreligious, and snarky can nevertheless have this weird Nerd Glaze come over their eyes when the topic comes up. They laud Humankind's Glorious Quest To Explore The Skies... And Beyond! If you express doubts about the cost-to-benefit ratio of manned space flight you get lectures about spinoffs like trampolines and Tang and, crap, I forgot the third one.

Everybody comes to DC and the first thing they want to see is the goddamn Air and Space Museum, which to me just seems tired and dated, reeking of my 1970s childhood and that brown/orange palette and wide ties and the Cold War. The whole of space culture gets this noble, uplifting Trekkie overlay. But the real impetus was always Beating the Russkies, with all the jingoism that entailed USA! USA! We are #1! It was never about universal brotherhood.

News flash: They call it "space" because there's pretty much nothing there.

Seems to me like the cost/benefit of space exploration/colonization makes a lot of sense since the potential benefit might mean the continued survival of our species.

Can we do it without the gloopy sentimentality? Or, at least, can I still roll my eyes when normal people get all fluttery over That Time They Met Alan Bean (or whoever)?

oh yeah if anything we should only approach it w/ hardnosed cynicism

the cost/benefit of space exploration/colonization makes a lot of sense since the potential benefit might mean the continued survival of our species mineral rights.

the cost/benefit of space exploration/colonization makes a lot of sense since the potential benefit might mean watching c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate

imo having large, society scale projects to rally around, even if they have no specific tangible benefit, is known to be a boon as far as morale goes and outside of the obvious monetary expenditure (which is not small) space exploration has historically fit that bill

the number of technological advances from the development of equipment for getting to and staying in space, along with insights into human physiology, is pretty huge as well

some examples: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html