Ewald

The “you have to be Christian to be British” proposition is not worth debating. It’s abject nonsense. You know it and they know it. Just call it out for the racism it is.

Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.

Since the government is about to introduce a social media ban for under-16s based largely on vibes – and Jonathan Haidt's shitty book – in the hopes it boosts its popularity (it won't), I'll re-up this.

If we're banning under-16s, why not over-60s?

Reform's candidate Matthew Goodwin challenged for calling it "insane" to prosecute a man for "start the slaughter. Violence & murder is the only way now. Start off burning every migrant hotel then head to MPs’ houses & Parliament, we need to take over by FORCE’
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

I can see no way in which this won't lead to bad outcomes.

You see someone and you automatically know who they are, get a link their social profile etc etc.

No way that can lead to bad outcomes at all. Stalkers dream.

Exactly. This is not a lot of money. And once destroyed you don’t get to rebuild it.

Here's a thought experiment for those doubting the value of 0.25bn. If the BBC world service was put up for sale how much would Musk or Bezos pay to get their mitts on it?

And it's not just FCO and the World Service.

The BBC more generally is having to make vast cuts as are the National Gallery, British Library, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company...

The list goes on.

The UK is destroying its own cultural identity as well as its soft power.

One visceral reaction for little naturalised me: I am British, but even though I live in England, I wouldn't call myself English. I guess closer to English that to, say, Welsh. But I suspect their rhetoric will easily shift there: I may only define myself as British if I can claim Englishness.

This isn't a purely philosophical or semantic argument about what "British" means.

Once you accept different tiers of British citizenship you gain a way to formally discriminate.

USSR documents famously had a "5th line" denoting ethnicity. Stalin's nationalist repressions used this as their basis.

Rubio Calls For The End Of A Tolerant, Democratic Europe And The Crowd Goes Wild Just over an hour ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the end of a tolerant, democratic Europe and its break-up into a disparate group of smaller, Trumpist states, and the Europeans in t...

Free piece just released. Marco Rubio called on tolerant, democratic, liberal Europe to destroy itself and embrace a Trump-like future. He received a standing ovation and we are told some people are reassured. If so, Europe will deserve everything coming its way. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

"everyone has to get back to the office because the important thing about business is human interaction" is dying, but "white collar jobs will be replaced by AI agents within 18 months" cannot yet be born; in this interregnum a variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Imagining curling but without the stone, like international floor polishing. Reckon it'd be a big hit.

What they're drunk on is 1. conflating writing a check with actually *creating things and 2. being enamored with brutally predatory guys who are very loud. Their list has *multiple* repeat sexual predators. Multiple genocide enablers & advocates of fascism. These people PREVENT innovation.

Surpised anyone is surprised about this: it is so obviously a manufactured, weaponized, moral panic wedge issue designed to split the left, and it has been enormously successful. Anyone witnessing the bot swarms on The Other Place couldn't have thought otherwise.

Thank you for your email. I am currently living in a dystopia and have no patience for email. If your matter is truly urgent, please send it to someone in Canada or New Zealand. I’ll reply in 2028, when I’m done screaming.

elodieunderglass I can confirm that most birds have a detectable amount of wiring behind the eyes - blinking lights and buttons and sliders and frizzy things that spark and chirp and beep. They also have a lot of soul that can communicate with ours because the programming is fairly compatible. Vultures are clever and curious, swans are clear and lawful, chickens have a lot of personality, caged parrots are dissociated and disinherited and frankly worrying, falconry-trained birds of prey are tremendously businesslike. And owls are absolutely lovely beasts with their own irreplaceable validity. but they are basically stuffed with polyester fiberfill. They have one button, like a child’s toy dinosaur that opens and closes its mouth when you press the back of its head. And it isn’t even a sophisticated electronic button it’s just a lever that rocks back and forth to make the claws open and close. I think they may have actually evolved independently from sponges. Their skulls simply exist to create holes that funnel sound and light, and as a place to hang a giant hinged beak. An owl is just an empty tube like a windchime that the wind whistles through, and you can drop meat down it. They use the meat to generate feathers, and then emit the bones in pressed little packages like those machines that flatten a penny and stamp it with the logo of a theme park. I think that’s the gist of it - most birds are electronics of varying levels of sophistication, but owls are just a system of levers and pulleys. No elevator music in those skulls, just the wind echoing through empty caverns of slightly irritating design. Absolutely fantastic.

finally found this tumblr post expounding on how stupid owls are piraticoctopus.tumblr.com/post/6741867...

My 8yo kid once asked me (while I was driving!), "Why aren't you having sex?" I nearly ran over a construction worker! Explaining that gay people exist has never endangered the life of road crew

2028:

"For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the south coast of Florida, as we can potentially achieve this in less than 5 years, whereas the Moon would take 10+ years."

It's related to the Pelopticon which ingests you from all directions at once.

I think it kind of is a big point. Ministers are supporting violent far right extremism and child porn. Any moral argument they make is rendered moot*

thats an actual phrase right? I didnt just make it up?

Boom

Just beyond parody at this point

Meanwhile every long term NW Labour voter I know is spitting fire at Starmer’s move to the far right on immigration and planning to vote Lib Dem or Green.

Now admittedly this is self-selecting because my friends and family are good people, but I don’t think they’re unusually good people

Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.) If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

I have hugely fond memories of the music / music tech shops. Used to fly through LHR with an 8 hr layover about once a year, and that pilgrimage was quite the thing for a forriner passing through!

Young men are the second most liberal group in the country after young women.

I agree that this is an improvement but why is “is racist“ so hard.

Erdős number - Wikipedia

Mathematicians will be familiar with the Erdős Number (1) which indicates how closely one collaborated with the famous mathematician Paul Erdős.

British politics now needs an Epstein number. Anyone with an Epstein number of 1 is deemed anathema.

(1) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%...