- entry 2025/08/22

Racism dressed as patriotism

This coming during a time of tension regarding the migrant crisis - something not helped by the words of Kemi Badenoch who not only seems entirely blind to the fact that this problem mostly blew up under the Tory's watch, but she herself is only British by the fact of being born here to non-British parents (her mother travelled to the UK from Nigeria for medical treatment), something the Nationality Act rescinded the year after her birth.
But, then, Tories and hypocrisy go hand in hand.

Anyway, the thing is, we Brits are not Americans. We don't wave flags around and talk about patriotism because we know we're British, we don't have anything to prove. And we certainly don't have the mindset of Americans that are simultaneously "American" and something else. Indeed, common expressions such as African American just sound weird to us. Which is it? African? American? If you were born there why aren't you American African instead? The word for a black person who is British? British. And (s)he doesn't need to wave a flag to demonstrate that fact.

Below is a picture from Google Street View. I went to the town mom grew up in and placed the peg-guy at a random location. It didn't take long at all to find somebody flying the flag. Indeed, if you should ever forget what the flag of the United States looks like, just drop yourself into suburbia anywhere and walk about a block, tops.

Thirteen stripes for the original thirteen colonies,
and fifty stars for the fifty states (in a 6-5 pattern).
(image from Google Streetview)

We Brits just don't do this. Sure, we'll put up bunting and wave flags for a ceremony, a royal anniversary or some spoilt brat marrying some other spoilt brat in an opulently decadent display of wealth 'liberated' from the subjects of the realm. We'll even wave the St. George's cross in support of somebody kicking an air-filled sac better than somebody else - and while all of the parts of the kingdom have their own teams, they suck, so it's usually only In-ger-lund! that makes it through. Some of us might even put up a flag or two for a tea party or school fête, but we'll take them down afterwards.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with feeling pride in one's country. There is nothing wrong with being proud of being British, at least, until you've studied history and understand that most of the Independence Days celebrated around the word are independence from us. 🥺

But waving flags? Hanging them from every lamp post just in case somebody didn't realise what country they were in? There's no way that isn't racist. It is making a statement that "This is England" (or Britain, depending on which flag) dressed up as patriotism, promoted by the right to push an "us versus them" narrative.

If your're British, answer honestly: This is crass, isn't it?
Image generated by CreArt AI.

Thank you, but us Brits? We know what our country is, and we can even find it on a map. We don't need a barrage of flags to remind us. We don't pledge allegiance to the King every morning. And, most of all, we really really don't need to prove ourselves to anyone.
We're British, full stop.
(yes, even me, living here in France)

And, really, if you want to know how British somebody is, a stupid Temu flag made in China isn't going to do it. Instead, ask them to name three brands of tea and which they prefer. No, coffee is not a valid answer.
(you'll have to pry my jar of teabags from my cold dead fingers)

Speaking of tea

As part of getting things ready, I have cleaned my flask. Many many days of work, many many times it has carried the pure sweet joy that is tea (I add the milk at point of drinking). It was... probably about as brown inside as my intestines. ☺

I put in some warm soapy water and the scrubber sponge thing, and moved it around using the handle of a broom (as my ladle's handle wasn't long enough). That did... relatively little actually.

So time to pull out a Plan B. Plan B was freshly boiled water and a dishwasher tablet. Yup, an entire tablet in about a litre of water. I didn't have a choice, it's not like a washing machine where you can buy liquid or powder and self dose. But, whatever, it was an inexpensive own-brand from the supermarket.

Ten minutes later, the water was thick brown. I tipped it out and just needed an odd little rubber-thing-on-a-stick (supposedly for cleaning flute glasses) to nudge the last of it away. But, really, it did an astonishing job. The edges? Clean. The level change at the bottom? Clean. A long rinse (because of nasty chemicals) and a final pass with freshly boiled water to disinfect whatever nasties might be lurking in the well water, and this is the result. It looks brand new.

Carefully photographed to look quite unlike what it is.

The dying of the light

Right. No disc. So I'm just hallucinating this shiny plastic circle in my hand, then? Maybe it is actually a hologram, projected by aliens. Or maybe I've finally lost the plot and am trying to get my CD player to play tea coasters? So, yeah, thanks. Helpful diagnosis, especially when it is wrong.

My portable CD player.

Pictured above has been my faithful friend for many years. In part because it can play MP3s, but largely because it has an anti-shake system that will spin the disc rapidly to dump the sound data into a buffer, and when the buffer is full the disc will slow right down, only to spin up to read another chunk of sound into the buffer. This means I can put it into my pocket and listen to a CD whilst I am working outside, mowing or whatever, and don't ha ha ha ve to pu     t up with ski         ps and st st st st uttering as the thing gets knocked. Yes, these days I, like almost everybody else, usually listen to MP3s playing from a phone, but sometimes you know, it is nice to pop in a CD and listen to a song the way it was authored and not how it was reconstituted after a clever algorithm threw a lot of it away. Besides, smartphones weren't a thing when I bought this. By comparison a mid-range mobile phone back then would have been something like a Nokia 6100 with a 128×128 1.5" screen with 4096 colours, 725K for a small number of Java apps, and a WAP browser (remember WAP?). Oh, and IrDA because neither Bluetooth nor WiFi existed.

This, the slow death of the laser diode, is the fate of all CD players, by the way. They don't go out in a blaze of glory like tape decks that start mangling cassettes or have one of the spinny things cease spinning. Or video recorders that...pretty much do the same thing, but with the added appeal of complicated tape loading mechanisms that might also decide to randomly jam up.
No, CD players die slowly, passive-aggressively, pretending the discs simply don't exist.

This isn't like a washing machine, that you avoid going near during its 1200 rpm spin (that's twenty rotations every second) because you imagine the failure is either doing to be a burnt MOSFET (hence no motor activity) or a blaze of failed bearings and smouldering rubber seals, with shrapnel embedded into the ceiling above.

No, the problem with CD players is pretty much going to be the laser. That little gizmo that has been shining its tiny beam of infrared for years is less a bright supernova to illuminate your CDs and more a white dwarf. A light with all the power of a cheap petrol station torch.

CDs are read using infrared light, around 780nm wavelength, that gets tightly focused onto a 'track' on the CD that consists of "pits" and "lands". A pit is where the original master disc had a bump etched into it, let's say this represents a zero. And where there isn't anything etched? That represents a one. The light from the laser is then either reflected, or not, up to a sensor that can 'see' the light, and will turn it into a stream of binary bits that represent the soundwave of your music (CD music is essentially the same as a 16 bit stereo WAV at 44.1kHz).
Actually, it's a hell of a lot more complicated because of tracking and an insane level of error correction to deal with scratches, not to mention the reflection is far more involved...so I'm simplifying it here a lot.
Because the laser beam is so fine, you can fit a continual spiral of something like four billion pits on the disc. If unwrapped and laid in a straight line, it's about three and a half miles (~6km) long. That's insanely tiny. And your CD player keeps track of all of this.

The laser diode inside your CD player has been pumping out photons since the day it was made. Unlike a light bulb, it doesn't go 'pop' and burn out. It fades. The output slowly drops. At first the player can compensate, because this is a known thing and the feedback circuit will adjust the laser's drive power. But eventually the diode is just too far gone. It can't "try harder", it's finished. In normal daily use, the laser diode is expected to last about five years. You might get more, but then you might not.

At first the decline is subtle, it will struggle with CD-Rs because writable discs don't reflect as well as commercial discs, and the dye method is less precise than a pressed disc. Then it gets picky about scratches. Then, one morning, it just refuses everything. Even your pristine newly-ordered "Best of Queen" box set.

You can try to fix it, of course. You'll find instructions on YouTube and various websites all saying the same thing. Some bloke with far too much confidence and far too little caution will tell you to just "turn the pot" as if it's some kind of magical incantation. This means to open up the CD player, examine the laser assembly, locate a potentiometer, and twiddle it until the player can once again see your discs. That's the ticket! Turn the tiny screw to crank up the laser power! Absolutely brilliant idea because when something is dying, obviously the solution is to dump more power into it. That will totally work. For about a week. Then the laser gives up entirely. It's rather like dragging somebody out of a nursing home, dosing them up on an entire six-pack of Red Bull, and then pushing them into running a marathon. They may even manage to expire faster than the laser diode, because inevitable things are, indeed, quite inevitable.

Fzzzzzzt!
(AI generated art by CreArt)

Could the laser be replaced? Technically, yes. Practically, forget about it. When you delve (highlighted because it's not just ChatGPT that uses the word "delve", people with larger vocabularies have an affinity for choosing cromulent words and in this case "delve" is precisely the word to utilise here) into this, you'll find that you can't just whip a laser out of something. There are different sorts of lasers with different sorts of powers and focusing and you'll find yourself looking for something silly like a Sony KSS-150 revision H but only the ones made on a Tuesday, which is suspiciously similar to a KSS-120A. Then you discover there are Japanese originals that are hard to get hold of, and plenty of shady Chinese vendors that must have a factory in Shenzen to strip the things out of some ancient karaoke machine that was cutting edge when Windows 98SE was a thing. Sold "as new" and yet, somehow, that blob of red glue stuck to it belies the "newness" of the parts.

And, finally, even if you were to source a part and it were to work, you'll need the CD player's service manual and a damn good oscilloscope to set it all up. Which will, of course, mean fiddling with that little pot. Because no two lasers are identical, that's why there's a pot there in the first place.

Meanwhile, the rest of the player is fine. The drive motor? No problem. The one that moves the head? Great. The little bouncy one that keeps the pickup at a precise distance from the disc? Happy and bouncy like a little girl on a sugar high. The one-bit delta-sigma DAC? Still more than capable of pumping out a sound quality that would make streaming services cry out in shame. Even the electrolytics are soldiering on. But the laser? The laser has left the chat.

So to the second "solution". Just rip your CDs and stream them, because the world has moved on from little spinny discs. Now people happily stream psychoacoustically compressed music over WiFi and then compress it again in order to pump it into their gold-plated Bluetooth earbuds offering the cutting-edge SBC audio codec for superior sound; because 160kps MP3 to SBC is just exactly every bit as good as an unadulterated bitstream coming from a CD player. You really can't hear the difference.

Oh, and lest you forget, when you're streaming you are coughing up real money to not actually own anything. You are simply renting access to your favourite songs. If you stop paying, or the licencing lawyers get their panties in a muddle, you'll find that "Comfortably Numb" has vanished, to be replaced by a disco remix of "Mmm-bop" that nobody asked for.
Your CD, on the other hand, sits on the shelf and whispers "I'm yours". So long as it doesn't succumb to bit rot like some of the lesser made discs, and it is kept out of the sun so won't suffer thermal destruction, it'll probably outlive you. Better yet, if the publisher and the streaming service have tantrums, your CDs won't vanish. That Polly Scattergood CD is yours, and it won't give any argy-bargy if you want to play Disco Damaged Kid repeatedly for an entire month. Actually, CDs are no-contact, rather like your mother in law should be. This means you can play it all day, all week, all month, or even all year. The disc won't wear out.
Except, of course, the gum in the works is that the doohickey-thingy that plays them is now in complete denial of their existence.

Vinyl people, of course, are laughing at this. Their turntables still work. If the belt breaks, buy a replacement. At a pinch, a rubber band may suffice. Stylus worn out? Buy and fit a new one. You can even, as a last ditch effort, fit a pencil into the end of a variable speed drill, fit a record onto that (drill underneath), and then rest a sewing needle taped to the pointy end of a paper cone onto the record. Start the thing spinning and music shall ensue. Granted, it'll sound kind of awful, but it will work and it will be recognisable (and it will likely bugger up the record so don't try this with your Tubular Bells LP).

Try doing anything like this with a CD. Go on, I dare you. Balance a laser pointer over the disc and wire it up to your cat. I'll wait. I'll even offer soothing words and bandages.

Of course, CD players aren't the only thing that uses strong pulses of finely focused light. So do DVD and Blu-ray players (how they work is the same basic idea), only this time they fail faster because even shorter wavelength therefore even more delicate. DVDs are 650nm (visible red) and Blu-ray is 405nm (visible violet, at the other end of the visible spectrum).
Oh, and our fancy shiny fibre routers? They use infra-red (typically at 850/1300/1500nm depending on fibre type) because there is far less attenuation with infra-red light in the cable itself. But since we're potentially talking many kilometres rather than reading a disc with a light travel of maybe five centimetres, it's a much more powerful laser driven with the sort of power that would make your CD player's laser erupt into flames and acrid smoke and it is pulsed on and off incredibly rapidly.

Anyway, that's why CD players get old and stop recognising discs. Not because discs rot. Not because you did anything wrong. But because the one crucial part, the little beam of light that makes the magic happen, just sort of fades quietly into that dark night, and all you can do about it is rage at the dying of the light.

Multipack pricing

Can somebody explain this in a way that makes sense?

Full English, sort of

So I made two burgers, some scrambled egg (four eggs!) with some fried shallot mixed in, a handful of chips, and half a tin of beans dumped on top. Lightly salted, but zero pepper.
My mouth didn't explode. I trust other parts of me won't.

I threw away the other half tin of beans. Okay, it's a bit pricey given the cost of beans over here, but I don't want to hit myself with an entire tin in case that is a problem.

See? I can cook more than pasta and microwave meals. ☺

Your comments:

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It's not that I don't want to hear from my British friends, it's because your country makes stupid laws.
 
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C Ferris, 23rd August 2025, 09:04

I can imagine 'Rick' running up a English Flag on his Farmhouse :-)    Not got a pot to put Beans in the Freezer?    Around the 'Word'??

Rick, 23rd August 2025, 09:36

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ?    Over my dead body.    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 !

JAD, 23rd August 2025, 13:05

I have one of these can openers. It allows the lid to be wedged back on, so half a can of beans can survice in the fridge for a few days.    https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000I7GRUM?th=1

jgh, 24th August 2025, 23:31

"African American ... why aren't you American African"    Nouns and adjectives.    The first is blah blah irrelavant adjective American.  The second is blah blah irrelevent adjective African.  The first is an American, the second is an African.    A Polish American is an American with Polish ancestry.  An American Pole is a Pole with American ancestry.    Nouns take priority, adjectives are optional removable decoration. That's just how the language works.    Getting politically serious for a moment (sorry!) this is part of what feeds the discontent with people in Britain refusing to adopt being British.    People from the Carribean came to the UK and called themselves blah blah irrelevant adjective Britons. (Black Britons, Afro-Carribean Britons)    More recently people have come from South Asia and call themselves blah blah irrelevant adjective Pakistanis (British Pakistani) or blah blah irrelevant adjective Muslims (British Muslim). Stating OUTRIGHT that they consider themselves NOT Britons. They are othering themselves right from the outset, following it up by adhering to that othering by refusing to join the society they have alledgedly joined.    When I lived in Hong Kong, my family all considered themselves HongKong British. ie, blah blah irrelevant adjective BRITISH. When China took over they made it very certain in all official doumentation that the people there were to be be described as HongKong Chinese. ie blah blah irrelevant adjective CHINESE. Stamping the identity firmly on the people. My family firmly describe themselves as Chinese HongKongers. Their identity is Hong Kong.

jgh, 24th August 2025, 23:35

"Ask them to name three brands of tea"    Tetley, Tetley and Tetley. Do I pass?    I was having a pub lunch today and they offerd me lemon-scented washing up liquid! What *is* the world coming to?!?

RISC IS Error Message, 25th August 2025, 23:17

You have no clue at all, do you. Indigenous Brits are set to become 1/12 of the population, whole towns are becoming Islamised, there’s real two tier policing and sentencing going on, the list goes on. Thousands of fighting age males streaming in each week. You ever wondered why they leave their women and children behind? When you flee war, you bring your family. When you go to war, you leave them safely behind. You are safely ensconced on a farm in France.     Try living here instead of pontificating from afar. Then you’ll understand why Brits are flying flags and why an uprising is imminent. We can’t all leg it then criticise the working class locals who prefer not to have their children raped, or stabbed in dance classes, or become a minority in their own country, consequently losing said country.

Rob, 26th August 2025, 17:50

Saw lots of union flags on lamp posts fir the first time today.    A good half of them were upside down. :-(

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