In todays light hearted look at the (non-political) news

[Yorick]

[Yorick]

Common sense
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https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/co ... nt=bullets

[Yorick]

At the bar just now I heard a couple of folk discussing the trans issues.

The final line was "When they say I identify as, it's the same as I pretend to be"

It got me thinking.

[Count Steer]

Something of a career change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9910r297zzo

I dunno, I expect a rather more disgraceful ageing process from young, rebellious musicians who are mainly known for a song about bashing the bishop.

[cheb]

Something of a career change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9910r297zzo

I dunno, I expect a rather more disgraceful ageing process from young, rebellious musicians who are mainly known for a song about bashing the bishop.

One of them said it wasn't but was glad that someone had suggested it was as it got them lots of publicity.

[Count Steer]

Something of a career change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9910r297zzo

I dunno, I expect a rather more disgraceful ageing process from young, rebellious musicians who are mainly known for a song about bashing the bishop.

One of them said it wasn't but was glad that someone had suggested it was as it got them lots of publicity.

It certainly didn't harm sales.

(It can't have been really - BBC radio and TV didn't ban it ).

[Horse]

Not really light-hearted, since it involves someone in pain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g7x85k8ygo.amp

But more about the headline used elsewhere:
.

Screenshot_20250511-154016.png (125.99 KiB) Viewed 717 times

Yes, damn those non-bike riding wasps

[ChrisW]

Yes, damn those non-bike riding wasps

Maybe he's afraid of the ones driving cars?

[Yorick]

Some folk have more money than sense.
10 bags for a few nights in a tent ?
.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czelydedx44o

[Mr. Dazzle]

And yet, they still manged to go out of business

[McNab]

Not really light-hearted, since it involves someone in pain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g7x85k8ygo.amp

But more about the headline used elsewhere:
.
Screenshot_20250511-154016.png

Yes, damn those non-bike riding wasps

I don't understand the story, has it just happened and now he's afraid to ride? Or did it happen last August and he only got back on the bike this week?

Some folk have more money than sense.
10 bags for a few nights in a tent ?
.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czelydedx44o

I get the feeling they never intended to honour the tickets.

[Yorick]

I reckon some of the toffs who paid, will have expensive lawyer friends.

[ZRX61]

oral.jpg (40.85 KiB) Viewed 580 times

[Saga Lout]

I'm not sure whether this belongs in this thread, the jokes thread or the political news thread.

Schoolchildren taught black people built Stonehenge

Wokeism at its best.

[Horse]

I'm not sure whether this belongs in this thread, the jokes thread or the political news thread.

Schoolchildren taught black people built Stonehenge

Wokeism at its best.

Behind a paywall, so I can't look up the report that's mentioned and read what it actually says. Google finds:

In recent years the study of human ancient DNA – extracted from excavated remains rather than living people – has become so popular that scientists are trying to clamp down on the number of samples taken from long-dead individuals.

The research keeps coming, however, and it can be hard to keep up. One recent project might have passed unnoticed outside of its specialism, but for one thing: Silvia Ghirotto, one of the scientists, told a journalist the people who built Stonehenge probably had ‘dark features’.

In other words, they were black.

The new study, from the University of Ferrara and published in the online journal bioRxiv, analysed ancient DNA from 348 people who died across Eurasia between 45,000 and 1,700 years ago. It found a more or less steady shift during that time from dark to lighter hair, eyes and skin, occurring at a slower rate than had previously been suspected. For most of those years, Europeans were browner than they are now.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wer ... nge-black/

Stonehenge was built over a long period, starting in the late Neolithic Age around 3000 BC and with the last major changes made in the early Bronze Age around 1500 BC


Edit: here's what the study said (but without further details we cannot know what is actually being taught rather than what the Telegraph claim):

Abstract
Light eyes, hair and skins probably evolved several times as Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa. In areas with lower UV radiation, light pigmentation alleles increased in frequency because of their adaptive advantage and of other contingent factors such as migration and drift. However, the tempo and mode of their spread is not known. Phenotypic inference from ancient DNA is complicated, both because these traits are polygenic, and because of low sequence depth. We evaluated the effects of the latter by randomly removing reads in two high-coverage ancient samples, the Paleolithic Ust’-Ishim from Russia and the Mesolithic SF12 from Sweden. We could thus compare three approaches to pigmentation inference, concluding that, for suboptimal levels of coverage (<8x), a probabilistic method estimating genotype likelihoods leads to the most robust predictions. We then applied that protocol to 348 ancient genomes from Eurasia, describing how skin, eye and hair color evolved over the past 45,000 years. The shift towards lighter pigmentations turned out to be all but linear in time and place, and slower than expected, with half of the individuals showing dark or intermediate skin colors well into the Copper and Iron ages. We also observed a peak of light eye pigmentation in Mesolithic times, and an accelerated change during the spread of Neolithic farmers over Western Eurasia, although localized processes of gene flow and admixture, or lack thereof, also played a significant role.

[Mr. Dazzle]

About to say the same as Hoss.

If you actually look at this story Saga you see that teaching black people built stone henge isn't laughable or ridiculous wokeism...it's potentially true.

I think it was dern who called you out before and I have to agree with him, you genuinely are an unpleasantly prejudiced person.

I know this is the light hearted thread so I'm not going to say any more, but sometimes this of thing is too much IMO.

[Horse]

About to say the same as Hoss.

If you actually look at this story Saga you see that teaching black people built stone henge isn't laughable or ridiculous wokeism...it's potentially true.

I think it was dern who called you out before and I have to agree with him, you genuinely are an unpleasantly prejudiced person.

I know this is the light hearted thread so I'm not going to say any more, but sometimes this of thing is too much IMO.

Quotes, for context on the timeline.

The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

The first modern humans, Homo sapiens, are believed to have arrived in Britain around 40,000 years ago. This is supported by the discovery of a jawbone, dated to about 41,000 years old, from Kents Cavern. At this time, Britain was connected to mainland Europe by a land bridge due to lower sea levels. While there's evidence of earlier human presence, these were likely sporadic visits, and the continuous occupation of Britain by modern humans began around 40,000 years ago.

[Treadeager]

Hoss tells us Stonehenge is circa 3000 years old and the Spectator article he quotes tells us of a ...quote " steady shift " in the appearance of " Europeans " over that period . That alone suggests they were more non-black than black . The same article also states that in no way were they " African " . Perhaps Dazzle simply doesn't accept these " facts " because they don't fit his agenda ?

[Saga Lout]

About to say the same as Hoss.

If you actually look at this story Saga you see that teaching black people built stone henge isn't laughable or ridiculous wokeism...it's potentially true.

I think it was dern who called you out before and I have to agree with him, you genuinely are an unpleasantly prejudiced person.

I know this is the light hearted thread so I'm not going to say any more, but sometimes this of thing is too much IMO.

And I think both of you are unpleasantly unpleasant but usually I just keep it to myself.

[Horse]

Hoss tells us Stonehenge is circa 3000 years old and the Spectator article he quotes tells us of a ...quote " steady shift " in the appearance of " Europeans " over that period . That alone suggests they were more non-black than black . The same article also states that in no way were they " African " . Perhaps Dazzle simply doesn't accept these " facts " because they don't fit his agenda ?

Dig out the research, read what it says

Tell you what, I'll do it for you:

Copper Age
(from approximately 6,000 to 3,500 years ago; 42 samples, 31 E, 33 H, 28 S). Even during the Copper Age dark phenotypes are prevalent. Most samples, 26, showed dark eyes, with the light phenotype present in five samples from Denmark, Hungary, Italy, and Romania.

Hair phenotypes remain mostly dark, with only one sample showing intermediate hair color (Denmark) and one samples exhibiting light hair color (Romania). Skin color is still predominantly dark (17 samples) in Eastern Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula, but intermediate skin tones are observed in Spain, Kazakhstan, and Central Europe (seven samples from Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Romania), and light skins in Denmark, Great Britain, and Romania (four samples).

Intriguingly, it means that the GB population might have been light skin. That's at a time when the population was measured in tens of thousands alive at any time and there was easy travel and trade with attached Europe. So is that single individual actually representative?

However, as said earlier, what's the truth behind it being taught? Perhaps someone could supply the details.