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[robbie @robbie Participant]

It’s something I’ve often wondered about. Like most living creatures fish have nerves, and when you see them gasping to breathe and convulsing, they certainly seem to be in distress.

@archer As far as I’m aware (aside from the urban myth that ‘fish don’t feel pain’) there is no scientific reason for us to treat fish so abysmally. I am no good as a fisherman and so seem not to be able to do it better myself… and therefore I don’t eat them.

Just finished watching the show. I personally marginally feel less pissed off with the Texan so called christian than the gun happy maniac with the crocs. At least the Texan truly feels some kind of emotion (presumably close to ‘gods creation’) when he kills them. Perhaps for him it’s what he was ‘meant to do’. But that’s small consolation from my POV. Either way, pretty f*cking abhorrent.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by robbie .

[robbie @robbie Participant]

The way you’re playing, where you stick on the same colour (or odds and evens,) means you aren’t taking it independently, but that you don’t get them same in a row enough to hit the upper limit. I triple each time, if I’m lucky, it goes well, but is time consuming, if I’m not, I’m bust. I use it, but only when dragged to a casino for a social occasion and set myself an upper limit.

[robbie @robbie Participant]

I’d want to know how many pages were left in a book, how long a film was or how many miles I’ve got to walk to get back to the car. Why not how many years I’ve got left?

We all know that we’re going to die, knowing when would certainly concentrate the mind, help us focus on what is truly important and promote a sense of perspective.

Wishing to remain in ignorance strikes me as pure squeamishness.

@andypandy All very well if you’re in your 40s expecting to live into your 80s. But you might die in a couple of years in a RTA. I’d rather not know that’s coming, as I don’t want to have to think constantly about my impending doom for the next 24 months, even if it does mean I can blow all my pension pot on crack and rent boys.

[robbie @robbie Participant]

I had this at my last house all the time and it was frickin annoying making endless 18 mile round trips to the sorting office.

When I moved here within a week everyone told me “we have a really good postman” and I was slightly baffled – I mean how good do you have to be to put stuff successfully through a letterbox?

Then I found out.

He leaves stuff in useful places, goes out of his way to leave with the neighbours if necessary, chats to everyone and if a casual postie has mistakenly taken back to the sorting office he says “give me the card, I’ll sort it out and bring it tomorrow”

I give him a £20 tip at Christmas but he’s worth his weight in gold.

[robbie @robbie Participant]

1. I don’t think we as outside observers can really understand why the troops open fire unless we’re standing there on their side.

I think we can. The kids pulling the triggers do so because they’re ordered to, they’ve been raised to, fed with a language and narrative of fear, hate and otherness that enables them to keep firing on their fellow human beings for the crime of protesting the miserable existence forced upon them. Their bosses do so because they have to. Their prison will not hold a rebellious population without putting down protest hard before it gathers momentum or negotiating deescalation. They don’t want to negotiate so they kill.

2. Having said that, this whole situation was known about, the protest was “advertised” in advance. Is bullets the only way this could have been contained.

Riot control measures would work today but then the protest would be bigger tomorrow. If you want to keep people caged you have to be prepared to kill them. People won’t live in cages.

3. I don’t understand why you would put yourself in the front of a protest like that knowing you would be likely to get shot. I’ve not looked at Eric’s link yet but I doubt that really explains it. Saying life and death are the same is a bit of a platitude. I really think (and I am of course generalising) that we in the West just don’t understand the Arab/Muslim mindset when it comes to life and death. It’s not that life doesn’t matter, I think it’s that they believe that death is just a transition rather than THE end, and this affects their whole attitude to everything.

You can’t? They’re people like you but brutalised, stripped of hope and opportunity. If you can’t understand how that drives people to suicidal acts of sacrifice in protest I’d suggest thinking again. It’s hardly without precedent, the story evokes for me horrible images from the past of bodies hanging burned on electrified wire. It’s the will to live rather than merely existing that drives people to risk death.

When I first heard that it had kicked off, my first thought was, oh shit, here we go again. I have no hope of peace happening in this generation.

Sorry.

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