there is a fat squirrel that comes and eats peanuts form the bird feeder. very cute

it undid it the other day and spilled the peanuts on the floor! cheeky thing

oh well. I'm going to have to rethink immigrating then

no chipmunks..deal is off.

if you bring them with you...

@MattE.Эллен They are super clever and could run a nuclear power plant.

if only they were motivated

But 1) they don't care, and 2) too skittish

they could probably find a good deal for brexit

jinx

:D

I'd vote squirrel over Tory any day

so many people would

At what age does one usually graduate from Eton?

Asking for a squirrel friend thinking of going into politics.

18 I would guess

I must go all the way to the end of a-levels

:D

do many Eton grads go on to oxbridge/etc?

I think so

if you've got money to go to Eton, you've got the money to get into any university

I keep hearing in some bios mentioned in the news that "So-and-so graduated from Eton", which comes across to me that they didn't go to college afterwards.

(pardon my americanism)

or is it just "I went to Eton and then went to a shit school (= not Oxbridge) afterwards so I'm only mentioning Eton"

I think it's more like graduate from Eton == is highly connected

getting into Eton must be difficult on merit alone

although that's only one way. people with a lot of connections might not have gone to Eton

In Holland, expensive private schools are only for bad/lazy children.

A degree from there is hardly a recommendation.

same in UK, only then they get to be politicians

@Cerberus 'troubled/disruptive children'?

That, too.

@MattE.Эллен Well, here you get no benefit from them (except in so far as it's better than no degree at all).

private schools in the UK are essentially a way of showing off how much money you have

Not here!

You're only put there if you do really poorly at school and your parents pay a lot of money to have people babysit you (which is the primary function of those schools).

@MattE.Эллен aren't they considered higher quality/a better education? (for al that extra money)

Eton is £13500 per term (3 terms per year)

So silly.

state school is paid for by tax payers

so no bragging rights

Even the princes and princesses go to a normal school.

@Cerberus cant a public highschool do the same (for free)?

@Cerberus Dutch royalty seem pretty chill

@Mitch A normal high school doesn't have the money to hire like triple the number of teachers per child...

@Cerberus all that is provided by the state here (in theory at least, I hear it doesn't work a lot of the time)

teachers are just meant to deal with such pupils

Nor the will: if a child cannot do well in school without lots of extra attention, then he should go to a lower level.*

*) Although many parents do buy private tutoring for their children...

@MattE.Эллен problem kids do make it difficult for the other students, so nice to have an outlet

@MattE.Эллен I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

@Mitch very true

@Cerberus the state provides "special needs" schools and teachers assistants for disruptive pupils

@MattE.Эллен Like 'The Dragon School'. All the disruptive kids get sent to Hogwarts.

OMG

That's what HP is all about

lol

it's all a metaphor

mind blown

@MattE.Эллен Well, yes, we have that, too, if they have some sort of handicap.

a metaphor for state run incarceration of 'witches' (=weirdos/people who talk too loudly in class)

But not if they're just unmotivated.

I can do unmotivated without even trying

There's lots of state money for children with mental or physical disabilities or syndromes or whatever.

and Harry Potter is the most disruptive pupil of all!

Whether in a regular school or in a special school.

@MattE.Эллен He's always getting into trouble, breaking rules.

a problem child

Always picking fights with that poor sensitive Malfoy kid

@Cerberus I see. I think we just let unmotivated people fail

@MattE.Эллен So do we. Unless their parents decide to put them in an expensive private school.

@Mitch yeah, it's not his fault his parents are alive

@Cerberus :D

Let the motivated ones do the unmotivated ones work. It's so obvious. They're motivated

@Mitch exactly

@MattE.Эллен Right. All those family troubles.

@Cerberus we've paid you a lot of money and Johan is still an idiot. why are you failing him?

have you considered the fact that your child might just not care?

perhaps try home-schooling

I don't think that's allowed!

:-o

I think home-schooling is allowed in the UK

Hmm.

home schooling is a luxury

I just checked, yes it is allowed

@Robusto That one in particular is gone and spam-blocked. If there are others, I'm not finding them.

@Cerberus okay I think I have thought of a good way to explain it.

A simple analogy. Might take a while to explain, though, because I fear you won't be familiar with anything involved in it.

There's that really bad movie. Universally regarded as bad. Battlefield Earth. Very poorly written, very poorly acted, very poorly filmed, very poorly cut, very poorly scored. All of that very obviously so, there's no two ways about it, you won't find anyone who disagrees.

Like, you know there's those really bad movies that are so bad they gain a cult following. The Room being one famous example. People watch it ironically. And have great fun. They genuinely enjoy how bad it is. But Battlefield Earth isn't even that. Nobody wants to watch it even to just laugh at it. It's not so bad it's good again. It's just all bad all the time, and that's the end of it.

@user240918 – ping?

And then there was that one rather famous film critic who recently passed away, Roger Ebert. Won the Pulitzer prize for his work, and all that. He went to watch Battlefield Earth. Couldn't stand it, of course. Started off his review saying the movie was "like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time: not merely bad, but unpleasant in a hostile way". Things like that. And it only went downhill from there, you can imagine.

So anyway. That's my preamble. The following is what I'm actually getting at.

In that review, Ebert wrote something else rather poignant and to the point. "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why."

Actually it's one of his most famous quotes.

And that is exactly how I felt reading J. K. Rowling. Every little thing — what she wrote about, how she wrote it, everything —, it was very obvious that she had read lots of really good books that did just that, but it was clear she had no understanding of when and why they did it.

She mimicks good writers, but not even for the purpose of coming across as a good writer. Like, that alone would actually make her a better writer, slowly but steadily.

But no, she just mimicks for the mimicking's sake. She has no goal in mind.

It's not that she is trying too hard, it's that she's not trying at all. She has no ambitions to come across as something she is not: a writer.

@RegDwigнt, can you undelete or otherwise share the text of somebody's (excellent) deleted answer here?

He used to hang out at O'Rourke's pub on North Avenue in the '70s/'80s. He would talk to anyone at the bar, especially if you bought him a beer.

@Robusto well yes, we discussed. Or rather, you told me.

@feetwet can do.

@Robusto oh, but one thing he'd have told you to go watch would be Grave of the Fireflies, had it come out by then.

He may not have been into video games, but he knew a good anime when he saw it.

@RegDwigнt Cool. If the OP of the deleted answer doesn't want to own it, I happily would – either on that question or on the one it was merged to! Or we can request it be anonymized. I still can't guess what the motivation for deleting it was, but it was so helpful I actually tried (without success) finding it in archive.org!

@Cerberus oh and you go watch that video from the 2:08 mark. Ebert explains the thing with the cartoonishly big eyes, and where it originated from. Because Japan it was not.

Damn, that's such a fine interview. Eight minutes of your time well spent.

I was sleeping while everyone in the world was talking.

@MattE.Эллен I wish Brexit will be stopped. I also wish Trump will be impeached.

@WillHunting me too

@Cerberus The best horror movie (not ghosts) is Wrong Turn 1--6 (cannibalism) or Halloween 1--11 (slasher).

And yes, I actually watched all those, except Halloween 2, because it is not really part of the series on Michael Myers but something else altogether, a one time thing.

Oh and I have not watched Halloween 11 yet, which I believe is still showing in the theatres!

I used to get muddled up between Halloween and Friday 13th, because they're both horror movie series based on dates

well I assume that's the reason, it could also be that I haven't seen either and so merged them for efficiency

@RegDwigнt Yep, perfectly expressed — as was usual with him.

Now I want to watch that.

@MattE.Эллен They're not really scary. Jacob's Ladder — now that's a scary movie. Psychological frights are way worse than bloodbaths, which are just stupid.

@RegDwigнt: Although since it's Japanese, and serious, I'm going to really hate it when one of the characters dies.

@WillHunting Your time was spent better napping than listening. The world is all talking with nothing to say.

Wait, is that John Lennon speaking?

@Mitch Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

@MetaEd Wherever you are, there you is

Is you is or is you ain't?

Also, I'd prefer a footbath to a bloodbath

unless it's a bloodorangebath.

gets rid of skunk stank