A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English by Shappi Khorsandi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good opening hook: an infant eating the goo out of her snotty nose and flashing her knickers at the author. Very easy to read and entertaining. I liked learning about Iranian culture and history, which I knew next to nothing about and there was comic relief throughout, dealing with the heavier subjects. One of my favorite bits is when Shappi’s grandma asks her why baby Jesus was gifted a lamb. She offered “Was it to make kebabs?” – in true Irooni style.

This book could have done with a family tree, akin to Dr Zhivago, because there are so many relatives it gets hard to remember who is related to who. Also, a glossary of Iranian words would have been helpful, though Shappi does define most of them in situ, there is a minority she doesn’t and you’re liable to forget some meanings. I would have liked her to talk more about Iranian history, especially the cause of the Iran-Iraq war.

It is written in the first person from the perspective of Shappi as a young child which I liked. I am quite amazed by the detail, with which she was able to recall all the various conversations, feelings and so on. Unless of course she’s embellished with poetic license.

The original title was in fact “English People Smell of Milk”, which I feel is better, but her publishers forced her to change it.

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I Think You’ll Find it’s a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Goldacre is on top form with this compilation of work, from his columns. I consider this a sister book to “Bad Science”, as it touches on similar themes. Very easy to read, a page turner, you don’t need to be from a science background to understand it. I like his persistence and committal to scientific values. The way he debunks Bad Science is both laudable admirable. The chapter on libel was especially eye opening. The fact that people reporting the truth are being silenced by charlatans, such as chiropractors, was especially eye opening. (I now know they’re bogus.)

I look forward to his future work.

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Parsnips, Buttered: How to baffle, bamboozle and boycott your way through modern life by Joe Lycett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lycett fights the good fight against modern society, by bamboozling them with his brand of buffoonery. The art of trolling has been forgotten especially by the media, who characterise flaming as trolling. Lycett does not make such an elementary mistake here. Armed with a legion of sockpuppets, which impressively includes the Chancellor of Germany, he unleashes justice on the public. There was audible mirth throughout the book, which is incredibly funny.

In short, FIVE STARS.

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The Book of the Year by James Harking
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was highly anticpated by myself. I highly enjoy the weekly podcast so naturally I would be inclined to read this book. Thankfully, due to the constant shilling/self promotion on the podcast, it felt like a must have. This is the first QI book I have read and actually enjoyed. Probably because the material in it is largely original. There is some overlap between the podcast and the contents, but given that they both sometimes have facts from 2017, it’s not the authors’ fault.

Sometimes I did find it slightly boring but other times it was highly entertaining, the tragic life of a compilation book. The part about a man mistaking a cat’s anus for a wound was espeically funny.
They could have improved this book with a references section. Sometimes I find it quite hard to find more inofrmation of some of the facts, even with the power of the internet. I felt like certain sections could have done with being longer.

I also found the “For x, See y….” sections almost always verbose and not needed. With the exception of the section on Donald Trump, I didn’t find them funny at all and tended to skip them (the back handed barbs at POTUS were much appreciated though). Having listened to the first chapter of the audiobook, I would probably have liked listening to that rather than reading the actual book, because you have the chemistry of the QI elves.

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The bourgeois military power existing in Westminster by its politics of robbery, taxation, violence, executions, and torture should open the eyes of the deluded. It is hostile not only to the working class, but, by the essence of things, to all the labouring peasantry as well. The labouring peasantry of the North of England and Wales should understand that only in union with the urban proletariat and the soldiers, in union with the Scottish and Northern Irish poor can the Conservatives be defeated.

This union of the urban and village poor can be realized only through the Labour party. Like it or not, New Labour will now strive towards the same thing for which Corbyn has long since begun to fight. His common goal is the overthrow of the autocracy of ministers and lords appointed by nepotism, hateful to the people, and the establishment of the power of workers by means of a nationwide armed insurrection. For that, their struggle against the right wing fascist media of the bourgeoisie, who are armed to the teeth, will have to be conducted as a regular frontline war, persistent and prolonged.

Inform the detachments of those points where Fleet Streets’s institutions and organizations have supplies of arms, clothing, and food, where they keep large sums of money and the system of their keeping.

There is need to work out in full detail the questions of the internal organization of the detachments, of leadership, of military-comradely discipline, of conspiracy, of the connection of the detachments with the outside world, of relations with the local populace, of the military-revolutionary field court, of the tactics of sabotage on enemy territory, such as the destruction of bridges, railway lines, steamboats, barges, stations, workshops and their technical equipment, the telegraph, mines, food supplies.

After Pasternak.

Icarus – The story of how the Russians got away with state sponsored doping for so long. I feel a little sorry for Rodchenkov. I’ll need to rewatch the bit where he explained how they swapped the samples.8/10

A Nightmare on Elm St – Quite disgusting. It’s good to view the original story after seeing so many parodies in popular culture. Very thrilling from start to finish. 9.5/10

The Falling Man – Documentary about identifying a man who was featured on the front page of a newspaper, jumping out of the World Trade Center, after the 9/11 attacks. Quite an intriguing journey, with lots of twists and turns. 8/10

The Theory of Everything – Heartening biopic of Stephen Hawking. It was less entertaining in the final third but overall excellent. 9/10

Quadrophenia – This is like grange hill the movie. I was expecting some sort of film about The Who, but they barely feature in this, beyond some music and a fleeting stint on screen. It’s all about a love story, in between the rivalry between the mods and rockers in 60s London. Add booze and party pills into the mix and you’ve got a winner. 9.5/10

Excalibur – Would have got a perfect score but the dialogue was a little hard to understand. It’s like the PG version of Conan the Barbarian. Similar to A Nightmare on Elm St, good to see the the myth in entirety after seeing only snippets throughout the years. Captivating from start to finish. 9.5/10

Soviet Afghan War Documentary – I never really understood why this war took place. It was all about soviet imperialism and expansion of the USSR. Nice to see them lose. I once heard something akin to: no invading force has ever conquered Afghanistan. Partly due to the terrain, partly the will and strength of the people. This is probably the moment that created the Muhjahdeen and ultimately the Taliban. Thanks ruskis. Audio quality was a little poor so marked down. Available on Youtube. 8/10

What we do in the Shadows – Disgusting. I expected better from the makers of Flight of the Concords. It was watchable, quite average though the parallels drawn between vampiric and modern society were quite funny and apt. 7.5/10

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – It was ok. Another action film really. I don’t remember much about it, which tends to happen if I’m not overly impressed by a film. 7/10

War for the planet of the apes – What I expected: A mindless, bloodthirsty action flick of apes bludgoening humans and vice versa. What I got: a heartfelt story of resistance, uprising and eventual freedom. The title implied the former so I was pleasantly surprised. James Rolfe said that, this is the best of the entire franchise and he is probably right. I came close to tears watching this. 8.5/10

Coming up to a year of enduring the tangerine tyrant aka Orange Blotus, I think it’s time I write about him (also as this blog is meant to have some political stuff in it). Though, I’m not sure what I can say that hasn’t been said already.

In brief, he’s an ultra narcissistic, racist, childish, dimwitted demagogue, snake oil salesman.

I always had a sinking suspicion that he’d win the election. Michael Moore wrote a very good piece outlining five reasons why Trump would win. Trump undermined democracy prior to the election, saying that the election was rigged, and he was right. It was rigged to let him win. The abomination of the electoral college trumped the popular vote. How would supporters of Trump feel, if it went the other way? Hillary was unfortunately a weak candidate, the ongoing email scandal didn’t help, calling potential voters deplorables didn’t either. A major factor was turnout. Bernie Sanders fanatics voted in an absolute fashion. If it’s not Bernie we won’t vote for them. Bernie or Bust. Well, look what you’ve done now. You’ve got someone who’s a million times worse than Hillary would have ever been. I’ve seen figures that it came down to 70,000 votes in three or four states and it would have gone the other way.

Character

Trump lies. A reductive argument would be so does every other politician. But do they lie to the extent and as often that Trump does? Probably not. And it’s obvious when he’s lying. Whether he’s lying about the size of his penis   inauguration crowd or knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI, berating a war widow, whenever he opens his mouth he’ll spit out lies.  How can you take anything he says at face value? He lies even on the most pettiest things, it’s ridiculous. He has accused several people and organisations of spreading fake news, except himself. How ironic.

People often paint Trump as not only a business genius, but an outright one. They say he’s playing “four dimensional chess” – i.e. complicated mind games with the media. Well, I put it to you, he’s doing no such thing and this simulacrum is because the media doesn’t know how to react, to his utter stupidity and barrages of daily denigration. “Trump must have done this for a reason!” They think, trying to keep sane and a shred of dignity. Being belittled by a genius doing it for a higher purpose, is more bearable than having it done by a stupid buffoon. Trump has incriminated/compromised himself multiple times and then lied to get out of it. Stop believing a serial liar. He’s making it up as he goes a long. Take a look at this American embassy moving to Jerusalem debacle. Trump believed he was merely fulfilling his campaign promise to be pro-Israel. He did not understand the ramifications and potential war that he has unleashed. Now Washington is trying desperately to reduce the fallout and wondering why Mahmoud Abbas won’t meet Mike Pence. Improvising worked well for him during the campaign, but it’s not working as well during his presidency.

It is wrong to say that Trump inherited most of his money.  His current self worth, is roughly ~$4bn but he inherited only $200m (that’s according to Marco Rubio, the true figure is not known. Trump says it was a $1m loan others say at least $40m), so he should be commended right? Wrong. Trump would have been richer if he invested in index funds. He has done worse than the stock market, which tends to raise in value over time. He has done worse than other billionaires from the same era. Take a look at Bill Gate’s returns. How did Trump make his fortune? By squeezing his suppliers, underpaying his workers and being a deadbeat. So much so, that the American banks wouldn’t lend to him and he had to go to Europe. Does this sound like the business acumen of a shrewd businessman? No. It’s the behaviour of a loan shark or gangster.
Continue reading Treatise on Trump →

I consider myself a encapsulated digital audio radio show prelistening podcast connoisseur; I estimate I’ve listened to over one thousand hours worth. It’s an estimate because AntennaPod likes to crash often and lose statistics. The 1st time is crashed, it didn’t have the stats feature. The second time I was at ~500 hours. Now in ~3 months, I’m at 361.3 hours. You may find this quite astonishing but I don’t spend much time doing nothing but listening podcasts, i.e. I’m doing something else most of the time. Whether it’s driving, shaving, cooking, being bored at work, running or using it as a bedtime story there’s a podcast for every situation. Hell I like podcasts so much, I upgraded the car radio so I could listen to them during driving.

I was quite late to the game. As you well know, I wasn’t too keen on smartphones which is probably the best way to listen to them apart from mp3 players with wifi of course. So initially, I tried listening to BrainStuff (which are typically 5 minutes) and then having to close a bunch of browser tabs when they were done. It wasn’t very practical. I also used to download them and put them manually onto my Zen Micro ®, which I remember being a real pain as I couldn’t tell which files needed to be transferred and which had been already. Using Sync would have helped here.
Continue reading Podcasts →

The news has many problems, I’ll discuss some of them here.

My biggest gripe is that the news must have balance even when the facts are unequivocal. For example, if climate change is being discused, they’ll get some crackpot who doesn’t “believe” in it to debate some poor scientist. The masses of course without a critical thought in their heads, will assume that the science is not settled and continue believing falsehood. Another example, why do religious groups comment on scientific matters like stem cell research? Why should we give a shit about what some invisible sky magician is purported to have said thousanmds of years ago? Why should we live by the ethics of a thousand or so years ago, today? The beauty of science is that it’s constantly evolving and bettering itself. Religion just assumes it’s right and inserts its fingers in its ears pretending it can’t hear the contrary. This is a double-edged sword however, we don’t want a situation like in America where the broadcast media is biased as is Faux Fox News. The present stance is fine, but where the facts are clear, only have the correct side should speak about it.

Often the BBC will transcribe radio shows as news stories, e.g. From our own correspondent. These often have a very long preamble and the headline only fleetingly refers to the substance of the article. In these cases, I don’t bother reading the article at all or skim it. Often I will not bother reading the end of articles because of the right of reply. The BBC has a habit of putting this at the bottom which is quite good, because it’s easier not to read it. One example is, there’ll be a story about the Tories not adequatley funding the health service. However, the right of reply is a carefully funded PR statement saying words to the effect of “The NHS has never before received this amount of money. The government is committed to ensuring world class care is provided to patients”. Unfortunately, in this time of information warfare, you’d be forgiven for believing the government. Nominally the NHS may be receiving more funding but increasing the budget by for arguments sake 0.1 % amounts to a real terms cut. Couple this with when it has in the past, received budget increases of 5% it is a cut. Imagine if the Nazi’s had PR, I can see the statement now:

The chancellor Herr Hitler utterly refutes allegations of genocide. Herr Hitler is committed to the security of the German people by providing employment, hygiene and the best possible care for the indigenous people of Germany. He is working hard to shape the future of Europe, for a better more equal society.

It is unfortunate that, the newspapers are owned by right wing facist bastards. Rupert Murdoch supposedly only cares about selling newspapers, right wing slants seem to sell so that’s what he gives the public. Paul Dacre on the other hand is a sanctimonius, cantankerous cunt. The cunt of cunts, if you will. He genuininely believes the bile he prints daily, spreading and profiting from fear and hatred. It’s good that print media is in its death throes, however the Daily Heil has amassed the largest newspaper website in the world, by printing so called yellow diarrhea “news”. It’s bad enough, that such newspapers exist but why do television news channels insist on featuring them in their programs? By definition newspapers are yesterday’s news. Broadcast media can surely find their own sources and report on them if they’re newsworthy.

Some sites like The Daily Beast, have an infinite scroll feature where as you finish one story, they’ll put another one up behind it. It is highly effective and keeps you reading. I just want to read the story I opened. Sites are becoming more sensationalized. It’s hardly surprisng, with the amount of competition out there. But even the BBC is doing click bait headlines now.

There is a campaign group called “Stop funding hate”, which encourages proprieters to stop advertising with The Daily Heil and to choke them of advertising revenue. Whilst an admirable aim, it sets a dangerous president as Ian Hislop notes. What’s to stop others from doing the same to left wing newspapers? Advertisers shouldn’t have the power to decide what gets printed. While you’re at it, go for the jugular and just convince people to not buy the paper in the first palce.

This post will show you how to subscribe to Youtube (YT) channels without having a YT account. You will also be able to subscribe only to videos that match a keyword. For example, say you like “AVGN” videos but don’t care too much for the rest of the stuff on Cinemassacre.

You’ll need an account at IFTTT (If this then that).

Background: YT/Google in their infinite wisdom, decided in 2014 to shut down their RSS feeds. Who needs functionality right? Instead, each channel is its own RSS feed but it isn’t valid.

Step 1 – Get the URL for the channel you want to subscribe to

For cinemassacre aka JamesNintendoNerd this would be https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd

Step 2 – Get RSS feed URL

We need to make this into a valid feed URL. So head over to a feed validator, in this example we’ll use W3 Schools. So put the URL through the validator and it’ll say the feed isn’t valid, but it’ll spit out an xml URL (an actual RSS feed). Save this for later. In our example, it is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC0M0rxSz3IF0CsSour1iWmw

Another method is to place the external channel ID at the end of this URL:  http://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=REPLACE_WITH_CHANNEL_ID

Step 3 – Create applet on IFTTT

The UI for this site is not user friendly.

• Click on ‘My Applets’ then ‘New applet’.
• Next, click on the blue “+this”.
• Select RSS feed
• If you merely want a notification for each new upload regardless
  of video content, select “New Feed Item”.
• If you want to match a keyword, select “New feed item matches“
• Put in the feed URL from the validator, optional insert keyword.
• Create Trigger.
• Now click on the blue “+that”
• You can choose anything you want for this option. It’s your preference how you want to be notified. We’ll choose email.
• Select “Send me an Email”.
• Optional “Complete action fields”. Don’t mess with it too much or it won’t work, the standard boiler plate is often sufficient.
• Create action.
• Finish.

Step 4 – Revel in mastery
Congratulations. You are now an RSS expert.