Partner is a teacher in a deprived area and parents have physically engaged with teachers on more than one occasion.

But even in my job which has a publicly known phone number people are finding it perfectly reasonable to shout down the phone despite nothing having gone wrong with their process.

People are getting more aggressive and it’ll be a mixture of things. Partially cos everything is fucked, but also, certainly in my case, things like Amazon have changed people’s expectations. They get something the next day, if they don’t like it they get a voucher no questions asked, or if they want they can scam the system.

Works fine for Amazon, doesn’t work fine of you try to force that business model onto already stretched public services. If they’re told their kid isn’t behaving or performing they’ll go on the attack and act like a shitty customer rather than a parent.

Not seen the movie.

Best friends is up and down. Had one definitive best friend who died around 5 years back and I’ve got a few clusters of friends, such as school pals, people I’ve been in bands with.

Though in the past year a bunch of work pals and old bandmates have come together and formed a new band just to have fun with, cos we’re all getting on a bit and need a hobby I suppose. It’s been really nice seeing them very often, bringing people from one element of my life into the fray with those from another.

I don’t think I’ve felt more friendship than right now in a long time because of this!

Ask a question, albeit rhetorical. Get answer that seems to agree with your stance.

Be a dick about it.

You got many friends?

It’s a way to turn people off of what they really mean.

“Quiet quitting” is just doing your job. Trying to make it seem like breaking your back to help someone profit is the minimum to do unless you want to be branded a quitter.

“Soft saving” is apparently the requirement of working til your dead because no one gets paid enough to…hard save…I guess.

Seems its the case in a heck of a lot of places frustratingly

UK.

Everyone's struggling. I can only speak for shy of 30 years ago (30 years old). But people can't stay afloat or get started.

Jobs are fucked. They're either entry level/service/retail jobs that pay nothing. Qualified or technical jobs that are paid less than 25k (I saw jobs requesting experience in coding languages and complex IT functions for around 23k) Then anything that pays more than 28k (still not enough to live on) has "senior" or "managing" in the title, requires experienced or qualifications that could single handedly run a business.

It feels like places are forcing more work onto individual people rather than hiring more people and spreading the work around.

I'm only at 24k and doing administrative work, Web dev, marketing, data management and some more technical stuff relating to the industry. But look at what's available and I'm not suitably equipped to get anything with a higher salary. Even when I am, the response tends to be a negative despite being quite strong at applying. Presumably the competition is that strong.

Otherwise, collectively with my partner, we have nearly 60k income. We could secure a mortgage, but we can't scrape together a house deposit. Even then the monthly repayments would be crazy high and inflation would screw us.

Both firm adults and living with parents despite having secure and intensive jobs. Can't get anywhere even with budgeting so tightly that enjoyment money is very limited. My savings have started being eaten into for the first time as of this past month, so I'm walking into living off negative money.

When I look around I'm actually not in that bad a situation compared to some. But then others are living the dream.

Feels like the lows and the highs are so wide here right now. Where when I was growing up, my dad was a postman then a private courier and my mum a cleaner and we were fine, not well off, but didn't live that differently to our middle class friends.

Moving on my mum took three menial jobs when we left my dad, but still paid rent and we never went without.

Don't really understand it all, but it seems that its all going to shit.

The wording was a tad dramatic.

I can afford to eat. But I can't afford housing and any enjoyment comes with guilt from knowing itll have a knock on effect to my finances. I'm living with a parent (who similarly struggles to pay bills)

It's more a case of finding it hard to hit the bills and not being able to see a future where I'm comfortable.

I'd say it's mostly due to the cost of living rather than the pay. 10 years ago I'd be doing quite well, but the pay grades haven't changed to meet inflation or accommodate for the high cost of living.

Looking, not much on the market right now, but it's a process I suppose!

I have a public service job.

Can't afford to live, get shouted at by callers irrelevant to my role each day just cos I am at a phone, can't work from home despite the whole organisation doing so, higher paid people throw their workload at me cos they don't want to do it.

Feels no different from when i was in the private sector really.

I think its cos he's found success without being technically "good" at the instrument. He's become massive off a kinda garage band sound and relatively sloppy live work, and dudes who are more technical proficient are probably a bit bitter.

But then I haven't heard of much hate on Jack White really. I've heard negative comments about his playing but usually his songwriting is well received.

Apparently my eyes go soft when I’m being silly. I enjoyed hearing it but I have no idea what it means

I got told to be careful of soy milk once by a conspiracy theorist buddy. Said it’ll turn me into a woman.

Hundred percent this conspiracy theory has bigoted roots.

Don’t I know it. Part of my job involves out main guys checking out buildings to assess potential danger if there’s damage or whatever.

If a member of the public calls something in that isn’t something relating to new construction work, it’s always perfectly fine, they just don’t like their neighbours or, usually, are racists who don’t like that non-white folk are building.

Can’t explain it but they’re always lying and it’s so clear. It’s come to the point I genuinely ask “is it actually dangerous or are you complaining about the work?” They always come out with something about the safety of children and double down.

It was Blackpool Zoo! Just to finish off our little holiday

Going to the zoo today. So should be a pretty good one!

A friend of mine said that he found looking for streamers on Twitch that stream something you’re interested in with your target language. Cos they most likely have a discord server, and it gives you the opportunity to converse with their community, and you’ll often be welcomed and helped out.

Grey

Woodhenge is a bit underwhelming (a few wood stumps in a pattern) but as it’s a good starting point to the free path, it’s a nice landmark to check off!

We went here a couple years back.

Drove to Woodhenge (a lot less impressive, but cool and you actually get to walk around the henge itself) then took a 40 minute stroll through some fields to get to a public footpath that was about a metre away from the paid stonehenge footpath.

Was really nice, we sat down, had some snacks and admired the henge.

Then later on our trip we passed through Avebury which is essentially a village surrounded by a henge. Massive rocks that you can touch, sit on, whatever.

Few tips for any stonehenge tourists! There’s a lot of history in that area.

Playing around with different cab IRs was key for me to finding the best tones. Blending multiple IRs can be great too.

I use a pack where the SM57 IR is a bit too harsh and the R121 IR is a bit too boomy. Together they’re beautiful.

Getting the appropriate input level is key too. From there, tweaking EQ can help a good amount.

I’d also recommend, if you’ve not already, trying out the Neural Amp Modeler. It’s a bit like a Kemper Profiler but open source and plugin based. There’s a website called Tonehunt full of captures by the community. There are some great options for tone there!