Morgan

Dick Van Dyke has OUTLIVED Dick Cheney

My son is on blockers legally from before the ban and we did everything they told us to do and now we are being threatened with social services if we don't allow them to "safely withdraw" medication. They admit that the impact will be "stark" for our kids but they are going to do it anyway.

Yeah, what amazes me is that Röhm didn't have the advantage of being able to check a biography of Ernst Röhm out from the library to see what happens next, but these guys do, so what is their excuse?

And, I mean, they're all deeply incurious, arrogant people, that's it, but still.

the traditional custodians of oxford are both town and gown, and the culture they're advocating a continued connection to is fighting in the streets about it -

like a lot of the contradictory implications seem partly explained by Tolkien *not* consciously prioritising trying to advance a very definite racist *or* anti-racist thesis and so not going out of his way to interrogate whether he's handling those themes consistently when his focus is elsewhere

it's partly looking for a *clear* thesis on race in it that makes it harder, I think: fundamentally, any fantasy world designed by a white English Christian man born in the late 19th century, however well-intentioned, will inevitably come marinated in a lot of problematic background noise

lots of people explaining to me (in good faith, tbc) that these companies are afraid that if they give people guidance on what to use/not use these tools for, it shrinks their potential market size, and, yes, i am aware. that's part of the problem i'm complaining about.

I also presume they've just given up on trying to stop people making themselves a cup of tea as soon as they get home

more fuel for my rant about how the scouring of the shire is an essential part of the narrative and leaving it out of the movies was a huge mistake

and yet Palantir have ruled out bidding for contracts on UK digital ID delivery because it's too undemocratic. PALANTIR.

when PALANTIR are like 'hey steady on, government, we're not sure we want in on this round of surveillance state stuff' that's...sure a thing

Saruman levels off the charts

may everyone get the brief but life-changing encounter with WWII-era Christopher Lee that they deserve

like, y'know, I want to be able to - and think it's important to, on a societal-scale level - think about setting up a payment plan. and about what can be done to distribute the cost more fairly as it comes due.

it's the "and damn the torpedoes" that concerns me more than the "full speed ahead"

yeah I think this is where we really diverge: I don't think knowing the cost precisely is possible, but I *do* always want to ask, and what I'm fundamentally suspicious of isn't the pro-tech/pro-future ideal, it's the not asking the cost

A very rotund squirrel holding an acorn in his paws and looking very happy. He is surrounded by piles of acorns

the National Trust said it’s an unprecedented year for acorns and I love this for him

not anymore they won't

the thing that most urgently needs doing if human labour no longer being needed (or much less of it being) actually is inevitable is to get on reconfiguring society so that people don't have to rely on working to live!

that's the essential bit for a post-work utopia and not just 100% unemployment

I keep seeing AI techbros talking about how full automation of work is inevitable and then going to 'so either we can contribute to making that happen or ignore it, these are the only options for what to do about it' and, uh, what?

no, if that's your focus, get on prepping for the consequences?

People treat it like there’s some kind of competition for who’s been victimized the most and not a collaboration to make sure we’re all victimized as little as possible

"Hey Shannon, what's the mood?"

Thinking about how people have managed to coopt feminist language to subtly denigrate men, rather than bring women equality. How men wanting tool-shaped soaps is "fragile masculinity" but women with rose soaps are "enjoying femininity"

Absolutely spot on - and also completely in line with their essential purity/taboo ideas of sex. Tale as old as time: this kind of sex is dirty, but I want it, therefore the dirt 'belongs' to the object of desire, who can be sectioned off and disposed of as contaminated, while I remain clean.

do the thing

yeah, what DO?

like part of it is reality is disappointing but part of it is

I do believe that in 2005 we had the real possibility of a much better 2025 than the one we ended up with and that's what really sucks

mostly it's that we didn't understand how things worked then but also I do believe that to some degree

some of those things felt possible because they *were* possible, or it was possible they might become feasible.

just. possible isn't inevitable.

& whether or not that's the pathway, if there *is* a pathway it'll probably be similarly incremental

if something sounds wildly futuristic it's probably because it *is* and there's still decades' worth of varied contributory breakthroughs involved in getting from here to there

wild in the 'the rollercoaster of the 2020s sure is a wild ride' sense, not so much wild in the 'unexpected' sense

Discworld QOTD, from Going Postal

A concrete thing every UK person who cares about trans rights can do right now:

1. Email a link of this report to your MP, with highlights from the executive summary in your email. Ask them what it means for your constituency and their party - highlight trans people's legally mandated human rights

you shouldn't get to say "we will not tolerate any form of discrimination" while discriminating, actually.