Party Vibe

Especially if they think you are a “poor foreigner” (i.e anywhere outside those regions including Scotland) :laugh_at:

Seriously though the Independent article also forgets Scotland is still in the UK and is a poor copy from the original Grauniad report that is in itself a dumbed down version of the original University paper which got its data from a survey that only has 3000 participants the bulk of which appear to be selected from around London.

I wouldn’t expect Richard Dawkins (who was indeed raised as an Anglican) to suddenly rediscover his faith or convert to any religion any other more than Mother Mary Angelica (RIP) deciding to become a Protestant when her health worsened in 2001 (having already survived a serious industrial accident in her youth, it was after she recovered from this that she was inspired to set up a TV station in Alabama which is hundreds of kilometres away from where she grew up).

He is to be fair a genuinely well educated and decent chap whose ideas are equally widely misquoted and misinterpreted in this country especially by commercial media as those of faith groups –

Many of his opinions are clearly shaped by the UK being the only European nation that semi-covertly forces a national religion into government and education systems (possibly contrary to widere EU law) which (unsurprisingly) ended up in a state of religious civil war throughout the entire 20th century.

BTW I was surprised to learn how many Catholic Universities (as well as high schools) still existed in Northern Europe but (other than the one in AT which is up some random mountain and only has around 200 students) they teach other subjects than theology including modern science (particularly in NL and BE). A lot of the papers about cryptography and physics come from these institutions.

The main one in Germany shut down its Computer Science course recently but this seems only because all the Professors have taken their early pensions – the campus spans many kilometres of open countryside so they quite correctly feel their students should spend as much time outdoors as possible studying nature (their geography and natural science courses are still popular).

Most of those in charge of content in UK secular “liberal/left wing” media are also white Englishmen who went to Oxbridge and are equally skilled at using both atheist and traditionalist religious arguments simply to stir controversy and encourage people to view sites which unless a strong adblocker is used would be full with adverts.

Other Anglicans are viewed as “too boring”; the influence of the EU has caused those Evangelical Protestants that exist in the UK to become more like Lutherans from Europe than the “yeeha” bible-thumpers from USA (which isn’t a bad thing) and Pope Francis causes these media types particular angst as he routinely criticises over consumption, commercialism and the shallowness of modern culture.

I’ve been comparing the ublock origin and privacy badger reports between the Independent, the Guardian, tech sites, various European left leaning newspapers, other “liberal/free thinking” websites aimed at younger people as well as two Catholic news sites in the UK (one of which has become more left wing than the Guardian today!) and a Buddhist run animal sanctuary on the NL/DE border.

Out of all of them it is consistently the religious sites that do not use excessive trackers or try and fill up the space with third party ads from dodgy sources (Google does seem to provide “religion friendly” advert services from looking at the reports of ublock origin, I am not sure what they would actually contain). EWTNs site and apps respect privacy way more than anything else I have seen online from America, the app even supplies an online bible in modern (American) English and Spanish that Protestants would have to pay for (and get less content too) :laugh_at: though if I do watch them its the German service as the “English for Europe one” always seems to be in American…

I do see directly sponsored content for such things as Franciscan retreats, Catholic charities and on the NL site a promotion for a (non religious) animal protection charity in the same region (which is tolerable and better than the tech sites with sponsored content for things that priced in $ only and often aren’t even sold in Europe)

Only once on a German Catholic news site been have I been whined at for using an ad blocker (though I suspect it is only because Axel Springer might be publishing it) whereas on sites aimed at young people (including those discussing controversial subjects where you would want more privacy) I’ve had the anti-adblocker message appear in Swedish, Italian and Norweigian (

Interestingly the Vatican site does trigger two ublock alerts but they are nothing to do with ads and appear to be a customised build of open source analytics software that is very likely used for legitimate security related purposes – as you might expect they get a lot of DDOS attempts…

@tryptameanie 984147 wrote:

GL, how the fuck do you know about a buddist run animal sanctuary in eaurope?

a few years ago there was a running joke about replacing spammers marketing posts with pictures of geese ; this was inspired by a headline in the local paper in late autumn which read “order goose now!” a few months after a very brainy chap I know who worked at the Telecom research centre took his early pension and decided to start an eco friendly farm with his wife.

He is of mixed German/Asian ancestry and slightly older than me but much smarter with electronics and also did all the right things in life such as completing his first degree, getting another (his wife is similarly intelligent) which is how they could both afford to retire. he no longer needed to drive to work so sold his compact VW motor car to a lad in Felixstowe for about £1500 and bought a Rohde & Schwarz oscilloscope (same company who make the device that BNetzA and the lass from Ofcom use to track the pirate broadcasters; it was one of the “cheaper” models (oscilloscopes are used for monitoring lower frequency signals). Some others cost as much as a new VW..

He used this to build a contraption that converted a Chinese chicken egg incubator to remotely monitored the temperature and humidity (as you might expect goose eggs require more humidity); and other equipment that tracked the weather and the locations of all living creatures on the farm and kept them all safe (even the “bad” animals that could menace the geese had a tolerance zone but if they crossed it they would soon get a jolt of 2000V from an low level electric fence (current limited to be annoying but not harmful). He successfully hatched 30 Emden geese [these originally come from from the border of NL and DE]- that winter at one point I seriously considered getting one not to eat but to keep as a pet; but found out it was unfair to do this unless you got a pair -which would not only trash the garden worse than cats but make noise, menace dogs and as I live in town land me with an ASBO.

It was around the same time I started learning Dutch and reading about the pirate stations so made this joke comment when someone asked what the donations got used for that we ran the servers from a secret goose shed in Ter Apel Groningen and it cost many Euros in electric and to bribe the Frauen/Mädchen across the border with cupcakes so they would not report us to Agentschap Telecom or BNetzA.

Just a few days after I learned there actually existed a goose sanctuary in the region (only a few km away) – the dude who runs it relocates and saves hundreds of wild geese that otherwise get put down as they are clased as a risk to traffic and aircraft.

although it is actually a multi species cente and works with all the other animal protection orgasniations there

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