Rogerborg

I've never even dared to try and sell anything via eBay in... [checks] wow, in 21 years. It looks like a mug's game at the moment. If I did, I'd be damn sure to create a new selling-only account, and probably burn it on the first negative. I mean, there are mong buyers on there who will actually leave negative ratings with "gr8 sellr thnx wood use agin". I've had a seller do that, when I said something like "Not real Lewis leathers, obviously, but surprisingly decent for the price", a completely true statement (£45 jacket, Lewis leathers cost 20x that much). Complained, had it wiped, with no way to appeal, amend, or follow up. Curious thing to do, given how unlikely it is that anyone would even bother to read it. Anyway, it's good to hear that eBay are at least aware of the issue of sellers getting ripped off, although whether they actually do anything about it is a different question.

It is actually a useful thing to know about, I got stuffed by my local getting locked down then closing down, and lost my UKARA for a year. Gun looks great, and since the defence for modification is future intent, having a game day booked should satisfy it regardless of any membership. Just between us (and the public record), I bought two-tones after my first day then had the paint stripped off within an hour of receiving them on the basis of having further days booked. Rub, rub here Rub, rub there Whether you're tin or plas-tic That's how we keep you realis-tic In the merry old land of Boz.

Did you ever learn the right incantation to get the magic smoke back in? Genuinely though, I wonder if 10A would be enough, or have I just found an excuse to buy a clamp meter.

Technically "mortors". Nah, I haven't tried those, but I am intrigued by the potential for deicide. How's the response and ROF? My Big Dragon M140s are significantly better at both than any of my stock CYMA, JG, Galaxy or Specna Arms motors. Hmm, I wonder if the 10A circuit on my cheap multimeters would be sufficient for measuring airsoft motors under load. I've got some project time scheduled, I might wire up a couple of Deans connectors and banana plugs and see if I can blow the bloody doors off my backup meter.

I'm the other way around. Even with waning efficacy of the current vaccines versus omicron and beyond, it seems clear that they're continuing to offer protection. Although the HSA (and BioNTech) are implying that we're looking at re-doses every 90 days or so, which comes with a moral hazard[*]. Masks, I haven't found any compelling evidence for community efficacy (as opposed to careful use in clinical settings). I mean, "it's just common sense", but my common observation is that many-to-most are being worn performatively rather than diligently. For context, I bought and used a box of FFP3 respirators in early March 2020, "responsibly stockpiling" before the panic buying started. I have no problems with measures that work, my issue (as with chrono!) is performing ritual safety theatre without any real benefit. That's an argument in favour of better mask wearing, but it's probably a futile one, given that the same talking heads exhorting us to wear them generally don't even bother when they think they're off camera. Coronaviruses mutate rapidly, that's why they're so successful and tenacious. We've never had a vaccine - or persistent herd immunity - for the common cold, as the several coronaviruses that cause those symptoms keep tweaking themselves just enough to escape immunity. SARS-COV-2 is likely to do the same, vaccines or not, and the significant difference between 1 and 2 is asymptotic transmission. That means variants are likely to spread because they'll already be out of the country before they're recognised as existing, or novel, let alone been sequenced and having a specific test created. [*] Out of interest, what's your thoughts on the WHO's position that richer countries should be sending doses to poorer countries rather than engaging in universal booster campaigns? If it was an either/or, would you prefer to get your third or fourth, versus a rural South African community nurse getting her first or second? https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/who-head-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-admonishes-countries-with-blanket-booster-programs/vi-AAS4mkw

This should be the default at sites. You could skip most of the briefings, just point at the board and say "Read it, no excuses." The eye-twitcher for me is when you ask a marshal (e.g.) "Oh, do gun hits count here?" and they go "Uhhhh..."

With respect, I have to note that two doses didn't protect you from being sick and symptomatic, so demonstrably can't prevent infection and transmission. Do I think people should be vaccinated at this point? Yes, I do. I even agree with Tony Blair (on this point only) that it's idiotic not to be. But do I blame the unvaccinated for the ongoing spread? No, not really, they're mostly harming themselves at this point. Given the dwindling numbers of unvaccinated versus the rising numbers of cases, it becomes harder to argue that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, let alone because of them. Stupid people, yes, not plague rats. At the risk of broken drumming, who are the Gibraltarians blaming for cancelling Christmas? It's perfectly understandable to want to blame a human agency for harming you, even when the damage is being done by something with no ill intent that's barely even a lifeform. And pre-coofs, I was always the guy in the office shouting at plague rats stupid people bringing their coughs and sniffles in with them. I haven't changed that opinion one iota - symptomatic people need to learn to bloody well isolate themselves, regardless of what they have or think they have. However, I prefer to reserve my real ire for the people who ordered, funded, and carried out the gain of function research in Wuhan.

I was DMRing. Player-marshal was not. You think he'd know better. He did not.

It's not going away even with complete vaccination. If it were, it wouldn't exist in Israel or Gibraltar. And given the HSA report today that protection from the mRNA boosters wanes after just 10 weeks, I'm becoming less convinced that "vaccine" is the correct term. Temporary prophylactic might be closer. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that the current mRNA jabs aren't working. I'm saying that they work as well as they work, and no better. They're not a panacea, and it seems clear that they need to be updated to target more recent variants. Given that omicron is turning out to be milder (as we'd expect), it's not unreasonable to ask: how many more doses, administered how frequently, and for how long? In the context that we're never going to have zero SARS-COV-2. It's never going away. They do provide some protection against infection and transmission, but much less than we'd hoped. And they've never claimed otherwise: all the trials only looked at protection from serious illness or death for the subject, not transmission (and I can't think how they could have done so). On masks and preventing transmission, the only large scale community study done is the Bangladesh one. The headline: Masks work. The details: unlimited amount of free, disposable, surgical-grade masks, in conjunction with a campaign to wear them and instructions on how to use them properly, reduced community infection by an amount just barely on the cusp of statistical significance (96 fewer cases out of a sample size of 106,201, p = 0.043). Cloth masks, even with the same campaign and instructions, did not (11 fewer cases out of 54,122). https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf Cato Institute also says no on cloth masks. https://www.cato.org/working-paper/evidence-community-cloth-face-masking-limit-spread-sars-cov-2-critical-review Am I against masks? Not as such. It seems common-sensical that they would serve a "nudge" purpose to remind us that there is still a hazardous virus going around - although the Bangladesh evidence doesn't even support that. What I'm against is people getting nudged to the point of fury at the absence of them, given the thinnest of evidence that even the best types actually have any benefit in the community.

Fraud requires gain for yourself or loss for another, which would be a hard argument to make unless you consider a potential fine as a loss. You might stretch it to conspiracy to commit an S36 offence, which would be rather bizarre as if you just walked in and said "Sell me a RIF" without providing any reason why, there could be no mens rea. This just further illustrates how bonkers the whole legislation is, although I wouldn't expect any changes to be in our favour. Every time some skip-licker goes postal with a RIF, I wonder if this will be the time when Fleet and Downing Streets decide to call time on our hijinks. OP's fine rather than fined though, I'm really just jealous of that go-faster pistol.

Huh. Well, that's one way of doing it. With no disrespect to you - you're not the one committing any offence - it's an absolute cad's trick by the retailer, and ill advised of the MVT to allow unvetted membership if it's being abused like this. The retailer knows fine well that they're selling this for airsoft use, not reenactment. There's no reasonable way they could claim that defence, for that pistol. It's a cynical box-ticking exercise, and if they're going to accept a bogus defence that won't actually protect them if legal push comes to shove, then I'd note that JustCos is only £20. Sorry, that rant isn't aimed at you, but at the whole farcical system. You've just illustrated how utterly pointless it is.

I meant, having fun by waving at them when they were falling short. In those situations, most of the time the person shooting at you will be convinced that they're hitting you (their gnu shoots 200m like a laser, legit), so they've already flagged you as a cheater. So: stand there and shoot back; head for cover in case they figure it out and raise their aim; or wind them up more with a wave? It's very wrong to do the last one, and I certainly would recommend it. Why, if you did it to me, I'd be livid. Nobody pays attention to the objective.

Is it fair to collectivise the views of all mask-sceptical and vaccine-hesitant people as being reflected by a loony-tunes lizard-people Q site?

Is your ex-fiancé ready to move on yet? I'm going to have to ask: MVT? Wow, that is pretty tacticool. I like the ghost ring iron sight, I might put some white or luminous paint on that for dark CQB if it doesn't already have some.

RIP, buddy, fliing hi wit de angles now. I guess we didn't get a Christmas miracle from either seller? I got a small one of my own though. The solid stock that rattled around inside Chyna, apparently got returned to sender there (twice!), then sat in UK Customs since November 26th got put through my letterbox yesterday. No sign that Customs had opened or inspected it, it seems it just sat on their desk for weeks for no apparent reason while they stared at it and regretted their life choices.

And a sight protector and a tracer unit and single, two and three point slings and a forward grip and a different pistol grip and a CQB stock and... Cancel your wedding plans now, you won't be able to afford it. Ahoy and welcome though. We're so-so on those Bulldogs, but they seem to be pretty standard V2 gearboxed M4s so anything that does go wrong should be fixable without too much drama. It'll doubtless migrate to become a loaner / backup / tinkering gun if you stick with the hobby.

Huh, seems like a lot of effort to go to to scam you, but looks like it. Sadly, I suspect this will be the eBay decision.

Poor lass, by the time she got the party favours out, everybody had already lost interest. Reject degeneracy, return to reloading.

It matters how you contextualise them, because you only find the cases that you test for. It's apples to apples, but it depends how deeply you rummage around in the sack to count them. We have ramped testing through the roof - and I do mean through, as the ONS daily figures show us doing more tests than we have capacity, which is... rather remarkable. Our case rate has risen even more sharply, indicating a higher positive test rate. That's bad. But the rise in admissions seems to have plateaued, and is lower than in September and November. That's good. Because of shorter stays, the rise in admissions isn't leading to a rise in those taking up beds. That's better. And mechanical ventilation (see above) and deaths are falling. That's great. I don't see much in these figures to justify violent dehumanising rhetoric. Describing our fellow citizens as diseased rodents is part of a trend too, and I don't much like where that line ends up. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

It would be clearer scaled by population, and by tests performed. The reason that I mention Gibraltar and - excuse me, it was Cyprus I was thinking of, rather than Malta - is that they've done even more testing per capita than the UK and have - can you guess? - found more cases per capita. Israel has done less, and found less. But wait, what's the positive test rate? Or viewed the other way, how many tests has each nation done in order to find a case? In Cyprus it's 64 (1.56% positive rate), Gibraltar is 55 (1.8%), Cyprus is 64, UK is 33 (3%), Israel is... 27 (3.7% positive test rate). So I agree that right now, Israel are doing better. Their cases are still trending up though, and overall, despite moving faster and harder, it appears that they've done worse for suppression, and had higher prevalence. If this sounds like an argument against vaccines and mitigation, it's not. Israel has done much (much) better in terms of deaths per capita, and that's what actually matters. But rather than celebrating the win, they're doing even more of "this shit". There's no light at the end of their tunnel, no Old Normal, just more green passes. My point is that there is no magic bullet against an endemic, mutating coronavirus, and that even vaxpässen will not macht frei. So we can rage about it and play chase-the-cases, or we can put it in perspective as an also-ran in the mortality and hospitalisation stakes rather than losing our collective minds every time we have another cycle of cases leading to tests leading to cases, while ICU and deaths actually continue to fall. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

"Suddenly"? Got to be one of the most wish-listed ever. I'm surprised nobody has come up with a bodykit. Imagine the ignominy of being bayonetted by Kraut Space Magic.

I'm again going to have to ask: who is to blame for Israel's high case rate, given their rapid, early, and near total compliance with sweeping interventions up to and beyond three vaccinations? This is going to go on for years, globally, regardless of what we do. Is it? July to September 2021, yes. It had already fallen to 35% by October. And yet you'll still see 90% repeated as "the latest figures" into December. There are plenty of headlines today about one ICU doctor repeating that 90% claim again, along with saying that it's patients in their 20s and 30s requiring care. Just about every media source is running with the same story, using the same wording, which is a good indication that it's being "nudged" via the revolving door between Fleet and Downing streets. Now, it may very well be true in in London. However, we don't know, since once of the doctor's complaints is that daily figures for care-vs-vaccination-status aren't available. And here's the thing you wouldn't guess from the headlines: the number of people requiring ventilation is falling, not rising. See the NHS figures here, Daily Admissions and Beds. The peak for mechanical ventilation was in early November, and it's actually trending down this week. If that's due to Londoners finally getting vaccinated, good, about time too. Or it could be due to better treatment options. Again, that's good news. Just please, let's look beyond the headlines, and keep things in perspective. Do I think that anyone still stubborn enough to be unvaccinated at this point is engaging in self- and societal harm? Yup. Do I think that calling them "plague rats" and engaging in a Two Minute Hate is likely to be constructive or persuasive? Nope. I'd rather that we celebrate the wins rather than turning on each other, no matter how cathartic it feels.

I meant, is it actually enforced? Not a huge deal, it's just that I have much the same concern about chrono, that it only takes a few rogues to spoil it for everyone.

Ahoy and welcome. Plenty of folk are just into the collecting and tinkering, they're fascinating bits of machinery - the fascination being that they work at all. Still, playing is a blast, if you get the right site and the right players. It sounds like you might enjoy milsims once you've got some experience. One thing, airsoft accuracy in the field isn't anything like airgun target accuracy, so try to enjoy the process as much as the results. I go to sites to get hit, not necessarily to make them.