As had been said - practice. It’s how native speakers of a language get good at it.

You can improve your vocabulary, comprehension and accent by watching TV shows and movies (I remember meeting Dutch kids on holiday who I thought were American as they learn so much from the screen), and grammar and the like can come from reading. However, that ease of conversation and the speed of your recall of words just comes from talking a lot. Try finding an intermediate to advanced language class where they insist on people talking in that language all the time.

I think JRM going is up there too.

I took the test here.

Mr Bump

That’s quite a big deal.

I’ve done it for years since they changed my polling station without me realising and it was a scramble to make it to the other one on time.

It can be, if you get know someone and find out what gets them off. It can also be a bit rubbish. I wouldn’t worry about it and you’ll find the right person eventually, if you want to that is.

That’s what a dog would say.

Chicanery all the way down with too many people on all levels expressing shock and dismay.

This is the first time backups of Sonata have been obtained by investigators outside UK Special Forces, which blocked previous efforts by the Royal Military Police (RMP) to copy the server.

To the dismay of the RMP investigators, a contractor hired by UK Special Forces (UKSF) during the murder investigation ran a program on the server in 2016 designed to permanently erase previously deleted files.

This process, known as “zeroing”, flew in the face of explicit instructions the RMP had given to UKSF that no data should be tampered with before the server could be copied.

The RMP quickly identified Sonata as a potential source of key evidence during the force’s investigation into the SAS, but according to the internal logbook of lead investigator Maj Jason Wright, the RMP’s efforts to obtain or copy the server encountered resistance and delays from UKSF from the outset.

According to the logbook, Maj Wright – who was then a captain – also met resistance from within the RMP. He wanted to use the force’s legal powers to seize the server, but his senior officer, Gold Commander John Harvey, directed Maj Wright not to use them.

…

In a memo summarising the Sonata case, Maj Wright would note that this was not the first time data had been deleted by UKSF. I In 2010, during a previous investigation into an alleged extrajudicial killing by the SAS, UKSF headquarters staff had “forensically wiped a laptop client machine the day before RMP had the opportunity to recover it”, Maj Wright wrote.

He added: “The deletion of evidence immediately prior to recovery by RMP is coincidental at best; at worst, this may be deemed suspicious.”

We rely on the lads from Hereford to pull of complex missions but they can’t be above the law or things get out of hand quickly. They can’t be above the law - if I was being investigated for a crime there wouldn’t be any gentlemen’s agreements, the relevant authorities would kick my door in early one morning.

Welcome to thr Bizarro World of Tory politics. We’ve got an Environment Minister who doesn’t care that the rivers and overflowing with excrement. The Housing Minister hasn’t overseen much housebuilding. And on and on.

I’d be very surprises if someone wasn’t working on at least a t-shirt design right now.

Once again, I am tapping the sign for people to go watch the two hour video by Shaun on the subject.

Good call, here is a link.

I am/was likely far too old to be in the target demographic for Pottermania but they never worked for me. They always felt a little… safe, reactionary even as they drew on a long tradition of British boarding school books without really addressing or undermining the genre tropes or even using it as a means to examine that culture. It then wasn’t a surprise to find out the author had some questionable views didn’t seem a great surprise to me.

Also, calling Tennant a “Harry Potter actor”, while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.

I’m not sure it’s a “calculated insult” but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else). I presume the writer or their editor went with that angle because because his having appeared in the Harry Potter movies is relevant to an article and fitted the wider context of JK Rowling falling out with HP cast members. I’m not convinced it was the right approach.

I can’t as Bobby Brewster and the Winkers’ Club is clearly the superior title.

That’s not much.

It’s an incredibly complicated issue, even if you look at individual cases (like Caster Semenya) and there’s almost no easy way to define what you mean by a woman. Ultimately it’s down to the individual sporting organisations to decide how to call it based on expert advice and any decision is going to disadvantage some athletes. If they think the decision is wrong, then there should be a way to appeal decisions because it can come down to difficult analysis based on each individual’s life history.

A compelling argument I’ve heard is that the greatest performance enhancing drug is being exposed to testosterone during puberty and that seems to be the base line a lot of the sporting organisations use. However, even then it is difficult to call for individuals and would need expert testimony on each individual case.

Seems perfect.

Brilliant!

That’s the right wing media for you. I don’t have them blocked in my newsfeed so I can see what they are up to and it is a completely different world - pretty much anything green gets hammered.

Get a chef who graduated from a renowned culinary school.

That’s what a friend of mine does - he is rarely home because the rich family that employs him want him on hand 24/7 and they pay accordingly. They get top notch food whenever they want it and are pretty safe from getting their food spat in. The Hindujas have probably ingested a lot of phlegm over the years. Should be good practice if they ever actually end up in prison.