More Fun with Our European Friends

As I’m w*rking this evening, only time for a quick update on the televised matches.

The last person who criticised the brevity of my posts.*
*Or possibly the one who said they preferred the short ones.

On the telly this week

Friday 6th December

Enisei-STM 12 – 28 Castres16:00epcrugby.com
Agen 3 – 73 Bordeaux Bègles19:00epcrugby.com
Edinburgh 31 – 20 Wasps19:35epcrugby.com
Bath 17 – 34 Clermont19:45BT Sport 2

Saturday 7th December

Northampton 16 – 43 Leinster13:00Channel 4 / BT Sport 2
Lyon 28 – 0 Treviso13:00BT Sport 3
Toulon 37 – 17 London Irish13:00epcrugby.com
Worcester 34 – 28 Dragons15:00epcrugby.com
Bristol 37 – 11 Stade Français15:00epcrugby.com
Zebre 27 – 24 Brive15:00epcrugby.com
Leicester 59 – 7 Calvisano15:00epcrugby.com
Ulster 25 – 24 Harlequins15:15BT Sport 2
La Rochelle 24 – 27 Glasgow15:15BT Sport 3
Munster 10 – 3 Saracens17:30BT Sport 2
Ospreys 19 – 40 Racing17:30BT Sport 3
Bayonne 11 – 19 Scarlets20:00epcrugby.com
Cardiff 54 – 22 Pau20:00 epcrugby.com / S4C

Sunday 8th December

Gloucester 26 – 17 Connacht13:00BT Sport 2
Sale 20 – 22 Exeter15:15BT Sport 2
Toulouse 23 – 9 Montpellier15:15BT Sport Extra

684 thoughts on “More Fun with Our European Friends

  1. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    that’s not a surprise, Ticht. he’s barely played a game for Edinburgh over the last 2 years. is he even playing or still injured?

    Like

  2. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    He’s played a few club games I think, Chimpie

    Like

  3. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    He had a brilliant 6 months in a sea of mediocrity. Wonder if his injury did for him.

    Like

  4. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    @Chimpie – you’re not our expert on outer space though so you’re no help there.

    Like

  5. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Not that I want to talk about it. In fact I can no longer talk with anyone at all without becoming furious, and everything I read by my contemporaries makes me quiver with indignation.

    Like

  6. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    How about typing on OB. does that also bring on the rage?

    Like

  7. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    who’s the resident expert on outer space anyhoo?

    I can do a job in their absence.

    Like

  8. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    It’s not preventing me from writing posts on here in which I’ll try to spew out my bile. Not for the time being anyway. It may be the case that on Friday the stupidity of the public overwhelms me.

    Like

  9. OurTerry's avatarOurTerry

    @chimpie

    How about typing on OB. does that also bring on the rage?

    Like

  10. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    “It may be the case that on Friday the stupidity of the public overwhelms me.”

    I just had a conversation with four people on FB, they were saying the boy asleep on the hospital floor was faked. I showed them an article which quoted the Chief Medical Officer from Leeds NHS Trust apologising for the situation. I showed another longer quote from the CMO in the Yorkshire Post. I showed them loads of twitter messages all worded exactly the same, all saying they had a friend who was a senior nurse at the hospital who said the photo was fake etc

    but no, “utter bullshit” apparently, it was faked by a Labour activist.

    Like

  11. likeadogonabone's avatarlikeadogonabone

    @Trisk

    Further along, Trisk. On the south side looking at Toronto.

    Like

  12. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    @Ticht – the last nine years drove many insane, made imbeciles of others, and left others in a permanent state of rage. I’m in the last category. It’s the right one.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. yosoy's avataryosoy

    who’s the resident expert on outer space anyhoo?

    Probably me as I’m a big fan of Musk.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Triskaidekaphobia's avatarTriskaidekaphobia

    Like toward Niagara on the Lake ? Which – memory recalls – is a very pleasant spot….

    Like

  15. yosoy's avataryosoy

    the last nine years drove many insane, made imbeciles of others, and left others in a permanent state of rage.

    This is what all the naysayers will be saying 9 years after we get to Mars.

    Like

  16. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Think I may have exhausted Flaubert’s letter to Turgenev now. Unless more French literature in schools and less PE is a goer.

    Like

  17. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    @Yos – I was going to suggest you, good to see you step up to the plate. Have we got the reports back yet from everyone that’s been fired out of a cannon at the sun or moon?

    Like

  18. yosoy's avataryosoy

    Have we got the reports back yet from everyone that’s been fired out of a cannon at the sun or moon?

    The budget didn’t stretch to space walkie-talkies. I spent it all on cannons and a Tesla rocket-car to ferry my friends around town.

    Like

  19. I know my sputniks if we are talking about outer space as seen through the galactic prism of 50s sci-fi movies.

    Liked by 3 people

  20. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    Ha, the first half of John Harris’s campaign trail video is from that shithole Dunbar. East Lothian is an SNP/Labour marginal

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2019/dec/10/anywhere-but-westminster-scotland-fear-and-lothian-on-the-campaign-trail-video

    Like

  21. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    The lass in the video with the glasses is a rapper/mc in a good band called The Honey Farm

    Like

  22. yosoy's avataryosoy

    yosoy’s weekly space news

    One of the Starlink satellites in the next batch of 60 that the wonderful SpaceX plans to launch in late December will be treated with a special coating designed to make the spacecraft less reflective and less likely to interfere with space observations, SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said Dec. 6.

    “We are going to get it done,” Shotwell said during a meeting with reporters at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne. “Not Brexit, just to avoid any confusion, but we are going to get it done. The satellite thing.”

    SpaceX already has deployed 120 really cool satellites that beam high-speed internet (up to 12.5 mbps), and thousands more really cool satellites will be launched over the next few years. Soon after the first launch in May, astronomers noted that the really cool satellites were extremely bright, prompting concerns that the constellation will interfere with scientific research and views of the night sky.

    Shotwell said the next batch has one really cool satellite “where we put a coating on the bottom.” She noted that this is just an experiment and could not predict if it will work. “We’re do trial and error to figure out the best way to get this done,” said Shotwell. “Again, I’m not talking about Brexit, but we will get it done. The really cool satellite thing.”

    Since reports first surfaced of really cool Starlink satellites disrupting astronomers, the company has taken the problem seriously, Shotwell insisted. “We want to make sure we do the right thing to make sure little kids can look through their telescope,” she said. “Astronomy is one of the few things that gets little kids excited about space.”

    When people look through their telescopes, “it’s really cool for them to see a really cool Starlink. But they should be looking at Saturn, at the moon. .. and the really cool Starlink”

    The coating that is being applied to one of the really cool satellites in the third batch of Starlinks is just the first step toward finding a permanent solution as more really cool satellites get deployed. Shotwell said the company plans to launch batches of 60 really cool satellites every two to three weeks over the next year to build the constellation that by mid 2020 will be ready to provide global coverage.

    Shotwell admitted that nobody in the company anticipated the problem when the really cool satellites were first designed.

    “No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.”

    The experimental coating that would make the really cool satellite less reflective could affect its performance, so that is something that will be examined, said Shotwell. “It definitely changes the performance of the really cool satellite, thermally. It’ll be some trial and error but we’ll fix it and it looks great. It comes in the same red that the really cool Tesla Model Y comes in. We’re hoping that this red will make people look up at the sky and think that it’s really cool.”

    Liked by 4 people

  23. likeadogonabone's avatarlikeadogonabone

    Not that far along, Trisk. That is on the other end of the wine region. I’m on the less scenic s. (Suburbia won out before the population learned that Ontario could grow decent wine-producing grapes.)

    Liked by 1 person

  24. As mentioned, I see a repeat of the Thatcher / Kinnock election but with some scruffy Foot thrown in. If history repeats itself then Labour will again lose bigly to a transparently despicable character, endure a phase of miserable shabby reality, try to clean the stables and put forward a leader easier on the eye and with more smarts / gumption in the Commons, on TV and in the media generally.

    There was a scathing article from Frankie Boyle in the Graun on the state of the election last week which skewered some of this almost too close to the bone.

    Like

  25. likeadogonabone's avatarlikeadogonabone

    @Yosoy

    Shotwell likes really likes the words ‘really cool’.
    I’m cool with that.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    Really cool news, yos-bro

    Like

  27. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    MrIks, I saw a quote from Frankie Boyle the other day that said he won’t be voting Tory on Thursday for the same reasons he won’t be kicking pensioners and kittens into traffic.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Chimpie's avatarChimpie

    Close to the bone skewering is Boyle’s thing.

    However, and I’m not really a grammar pedant (honest), his use of commas drove me nearly up the wall in that last effort of his.

    Like

  29. Get your money grabbing grubby little satellites out of my night sky Yosoy!

    Like

  30. flair99's avatarflair99

    Ticht, as you mentionned the Clearances and I had no idea what you meant, I looked it up. Dreadful stuff. Nowadays we’d call it ethnic cleansing.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. Triskaidekaphobia's avatarTriskaidekaphobia

    “That is on the other end of the wine region”

    I’ve had Ontario wine – once a long time ago (two sad stories there in 5 words)

    Liked by 1 person

  32. “Well, you and I
    we made our rich sky
    where we really had no right to go
    and now
    its run over and taken
    all our lives,
    I wish that I could turn
    and tell you,
    no…”

    Like

  33. Shite got the words wrong. Should be ‘overrun and taken all our lives’

    Like

  34. There was also one awfully laboured pun in the article I read, pun intended. But otherwise Boyle nailed a lot of the shit down in a few scathing words.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    That Boyle article was great.

    Like

  36. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Does anyone feel like writing an ATL this week? she asks, hopefully.

    Like

  37. yosoy's avataryosoy

    Does anyone feel like writing an ATL this week? she asks, hopefully.

    I can do one on space.

    Like

  38. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Space rugby? ;-) I’ll take it!

    Like

  39. Unfortunately opinionated talk seems to take place in silos and echo chambers that are bloated with the views of the like-minded.

    In bygone days you could trust the BBC or ITV to enlighten the public through broadcasts and exposes because they were the legitimate source of neutrality and truth, albeit for a national but captive audience.

    It seems to me that the explosion of sources of information has just created a network of tunnels where you can hide and listen to what you want to hear.

    Like

  40. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    Flair, there is a Gaelic word “Duathchas”, which as I understand it, is a concept of trust. There was the quite usual understanding between the people who worked the land and the person who was accepted as their leader. The leader would ask them to fight for whichever king, which they did, they would work the land, and in return the leader would offer these folk protection. So far so normal for the time. However the word Clan, or Clann means “children” and there is a much deeper meaning to Duathchas in the Highlands than perhaps was found elsewhere. The understanding was that the land belonged to everyone, the Clans weren’t really based around long bloodlines, more around geographical location.

    What I’m getting to was that someone’s word was worth far more than perhaps it is today, and for someone to forcibly remove vast numbers of people to make way for profitable grazing animals was the utmost violation, not only of an agreement, but of a whole way of life, a violation of an entire culture.

    Like

  41. Space rugby is short for the way Finn floats passes against England, right?

    Like

  42. I fucking loath Boris Johnson.

    Liked by 1 person

  43. Let’s see if getting that out in the open is the light at the end of the tunnel.

    Like

  44. flair99's avatarflair99

    Ticht, if I understand correctly, the Clearances also meant Gaelic lost ground to English as more and more people had to leave the Highlands for other parts of Scotland or even worse had to emigrate.
    Do you speak Gaelic yourself?

    Like

  45. I can’t do justice to an ATL leading into the Euro cup games, Thauma. I’m just not up to speed on it apart from the throes and woes of the Drags.

    I could cobble together a Drags preview. Or finish that bloody cwis in my head but that might cause formatting / preparation problems I imagine?

    Help!

    Like

  46. OurTerry's avatarOurTerry

    @flair

    If you’re still interested in looking at land confiscation on these islands take a look at plantation in Ireland. This is the basis for the modern “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and for the controversy about the Brexit backstop etc

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland

    Like

  47. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    Flair, yes that period was important in terms of loss of Gaelic-speaking numbers, but perhaps more so was the enforced speaking of English, by way of brutal corporal punishment, in the Highlands after the Jacobite Rebellion in the middle of the 18th century.

    I don’t speak Gaelic, I’m from the Lowlands, but I grew up speaking a mixture of English and Scots. Some think of Scots as a sister language to English which developed separately and at the same time, others view it as merely a dialect of English, but I could begin and end a conversation and not really use English words much at all.
    I’ve lost practically all of that.

    There is a phenomena called The Scottish Cringe, which means that we have been made to feel embarrassed by the Scots language, it’s okay to sing children’s song in it, but serious subjects should be spoken about in English.
    Gaelic has a similar feeling but less so, and Gaelic seems to be going through a bit of a revival.

    Like

  48. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    OT, what’s the English land grab called?

    I should know, something about fencing

    Like

  49. tichtheid's avatartichtheid

    FFS!

    Enclosure, how did I forget that?

    Liked by 2 people

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