Messages

Someone remind me to come back and back this when my brain is working again in a day or two pls

Yeah I don't see how the big spring offensive would actually be successful. Every frontline seems to be well fortified or protected by natural barriers, unless the saboteur/guerrilla forces remaining in occupied territory are somehow able to cause a major distraction I really don't expect to see any big breakthrough, and I imagine that's a very unlikely scenario too.
But I also don't see why Ukraine and the US keep promoting the big spring offensive if they don't have something planned, and I don't know much about warfare.

He's pretty close to being fully pacifist, it's perhaps the main reason I'm glad he's no longer Labour leader. I'm pretty sure he's gone back to being a fairly irrelevant backbencher now, maybe some of the leftier left still support him but I seriously doubt he has much influence anymore.

There's also currently a shortage of placement opportunities for healthcare students (or at least for Physios, can't speak to other professions but I think other AHPs are also facing this issue) in the UK and apparently out of the UK too. Not really sure why this is, perhaps because of high demand for workers to be working and not having time to act as educators on placement right now, I think this was happening to some extent before covid (I was told it was by Edinburgh Napier back in 2019 or 2018, but I don't know if that was actually true or if it was just a problem facing them since their physio course was quite new), and like everything else the pandemic has worsened it.
Quite worrying considering that healthcare degrees really can't produce effective healthcare professionals if they don't also have good quality placements. I suspect we really need to rethink how AHPs are trained, there is currently an apprenticeship route in the UK but it's very difficult to find a trust that will sponsor you since they have to pay you at a band 4 level and pay your tuition fees (which I think are the full 9,250 a year despite the university not being even close to providing full time tuition in this case). My experience as a current physio student is that the degree course is very lacking and seems to heavily rely on the placement component, but whether that's just because my university is failing or if this is the national standard I don't know.

Indeed, I think we're some of the last of the original bunch of members... will you be around for the meetup later, Penty?

I expect I may

This is making me feel old.

Don't worry, that's just because you are old

Re the healthcare issue, it's already been recognised by governments but the issues are far deeper than just politics. The NHS has been focused on these long term interventions for a while now, but on top of long waiting lists, staff and resource shortages (which have been massively exacerbated by Covid) there's also the fact that these interventions require patients to take the responsibility for their own health. There isn't any easy solution to that, education is crucial, and funding for grass roots sports, having more PE in schools (ideally alongside education on why we do PE), workplace health interventions etc would help, but the fact is a lot of people just don't really think about their health until they're feeling the effects of their life long habits. Quite often it's already too late to avoid complications at that stage, although we do focus on exercise and education based rehab alongside medical management for cardiac and pulmonary issues, which can be very effective if the pre-existing damage isn't too severe or isn't degenerative.
For certain health risks like smoking we've seen a good long term decline in smoking rates, however someone who's spent 30 years heavily smoking before quitting at 55 has already done a lot of damage to their lungs, brain and body, even if they haven't developed emphysema. Likewise, even though resistance training is beneficial at any age, if you are taking it up at 65 because you've developed osteoporosis, then the fact is you're a few decades too late to develop much bone density. And again, this is all assuming that we can convince these older populations that they need to change their life long habits and develop healthy ones.

Whatever political changes we make, providing health and social care for an aging population is going to be extremely expensive, and is going to strain the current working age populations. Political changes are obviously still required, our rates of childhood obesity are still rising (there was a big spike during the pandemic thanks to lockdowns) and we can't afford to abandon the health of our younger populations just to focus on keeping old folks going.

On the brightside, I have seen a lot more young people (even including school kids) going to my local gym, and in general there does seem to be more awareness and general debate on these issues, so hopefully this is a real trend that we'll see evidence of in the next few years.

I remember when Ex was just a little baby forum

What's the reasoning behind setting up private/semi-private security forces? I get that Wagner had been useful for influencing foreign wars without officially using Russian troops, but what's the benefit of setting up private armies? Does this indicate that Putin wants political actors who can provide some kind of check to the official military, or that he's unable to prevent them forming these armies? Are they somehow useful in a way the army aren't?

[Pent]

After last weekend I feel I really ought to go play Pentiment.

I've occasionally been playing a little of the Divide and Conquer LOTR mod for Medieval 2, because TW peaked with Med2 and nothing will ever be as good again so we might as well all give up wooooooo

Steel booted, golden handed.

Booo
Down with this sort of thing!

Yeah, the logic being that nobody was using it very much and it made the forum look more rather than less deserted most of the time. If we get back to having a good amount more activity and people are using things like this general chat thread so much that we need to reinstate it to help keep the flow, then of course we'll look into it. We're... a little way off that, right now.

Well this is a prime example of the deep flaws inherent with democracy. I propose that you choose me as Exilian's first benevolent tyrant so I can save you silly geese from making such awful decisions in the future. Bask in my golden aura dear subjects.

Heating and electricity prices are supposed to be crazy in the UK.  But its confusing because old and corporate social media tend towards catastrophizing or channeling Dr. Pangloss.

Kind of, government (eventually) imposed a price cap on energy but it only applies to households, so businesses are generally paying obscene rates now. Petrol and diesel prices finally came down recently, still a lot higher than pre-pandemic but significantly less than they were at their height.
Inflation is generally higher than wage increases have been, though I'd say worker shortages have made it easier to find entry level and lower skilled work, and anecdotally I've seen significantly higher wages for the kind of casual manual labour work I tend to pick up.

Booo
Down with this sort of thing!

What happened to the little chat bar at the top of the forum home page?

["Exilian Pentagathus"]

You.com, a search engine, now includes an AI answering service. It's amazingly bad. Unlike ChatGPT, You's AI attempts to read very directly from the internet and cite its web sources. Unfortunately it also totally lacks logical consistency, like most LLM AIs. A lot of its bullarmadillo is vaguely plausible sounding... here are some sample queries, feel free to add your own excitements.

"Exilian Pentagathus"

Pentagathus is a prominent figure in the Exilian community, having served as an administrator for Mount & Blade Warband and having founded the website in March of 2008. He is also the creator of the popular Snowstorm Creative Competition, which is an annual competition for creating game assets. Additionally, he has contributed to several projects, such as the Exilian Chain Writing 2020 and the Free Library of Images for Everyone [1][2]. He is also the recipient of the Exilian Award for Outstanding Service.

Sorry I can't find the error here.