if he criticised injustice when he was poor they said he was jealous and if ditto when he was rich they said he was a hypocrite and actually they just didn't want it criticised. Ish. From memory.
@Ailbhe I do think there's a lot of, "when you point out that this is real humans I joke about wanting dead, it makes me feel bad and I'd rather you didn't do that" going on here.
The reason it pisses me off so much specifically, I guess, is because when this started happening I was anticipating bringing my boat here eventually, and followed the discussion groups, and now I've followed them for the last few years.
And some of the stories I heard, people were really fucking scared, you know? When the only people who knew about this were sailors and marine biologists and a few others, seeing videos of people cowering in terror and despair as this gang of enormous fucking sea monsters set about destroying the only thing keeping them from just drowning.
And the story of the family who evacuated to their life raft (being in an inflatable life raft is a wretched miserable experience: you are cold, you are wet, and you are almost certainly covered in your own vomit), beggi
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@Ailbhe I do think there's a lot of, "when you point out that this is real humans I joke about wanting dead, it makes me feel bad and I'd rather you didn't do that" going on here.
The reason it pisses me off so much specifically, I guess, is because when this started happening I was anticipating bringing my boat here eventually, and followed the discussion groups, and now I've followed them for the last few years.
And some of the stories I heard, people were really fucking scared, you know? When the only people who knew about this were sailors and marine biologists and a few others, seeing videos of people cowering in terror and despair as this gang of enormous fucking sea monsters set about destroying the only thing keeping them from just drowning.
And the story of the family who evacuated to their life raft (being in an inflatable life raft is a wretched miserable experience: you are cold, you are wet, and you are almost certainly covered in your own vomit), begging rescuers not to come near in case they brought the orcas back.
And then people tell me that I'm pissing them off because I think that laughing at these people is fucked up. Just ... no.
@Kincaid @Ailbhe yeah. If this doesn’t deescalate soon, it possibly ends in the extinction of the Iberian orca.
The Spanish marine authorities could have nipped this in the bud 3 years ago by culling 3 individuals, but decided malign indifference was a better approach because of the reason.
A common complaint about “disruptor” types is that they are entirely cavalier about tossing aside established practice without establishing whether or not it’s established for a bloody good reason.
A phrase often used by critics of these people is that safety standards and engineering regulations are “written in blood”.
I understand one of the people currently trapped in the “Fred in a very expensive shed” submarine is the man responsible for building the thing with obvious disdain for safety and engineering regs.
@Hugs4friends ♾ Indeed. If, as seems likely, they die because they trusted this cowboy with their lives, I hope enough remains of his estate for their families to sue it into oblivion.
It's the "teenage son" that boils my piss. take all the risks you want for yourself and your rich mates, but taking a teenager into what can be fairly described as a rickety deathtrap? No.
Yeah. I've been waiting for someone to say, "What seriously, your pops got a whole fishing boat for free? Yeah right!" which is something else that needs addressing in this context. Rural and coastal communities often have barter cultures, and while my dad is skint, he's also built many of the dry-stone walls (a dying skill) in his part of Wales, and odd-jobs for people without even thinking of charging. You got a swarm of bees? Call dad, he keeps them and farms them for honey. What goes around, comes around.
It's all just a lot more complicated than The Discourse (as you put it) allows for. We should be advocating for deterants to stop an endangered species from attacking boats, not egging them on! Because at this rate people will start harpooning orcas on sight...and then it won't be "the rich" who suffer.
@Probably Paul Also, there are a glut of GRP boats from the 70s and 80s that are literally worth nothing, but the hulls are still perfectly fine. These boats are often passed on for a couple of hundred euros, or even nothing, and then the interiors and rigging rebuilt as hobbies.
Sites like Twitter always had this thread decontextualising problem too, although they do show that a post is part of a thread at least. Some Fedi clients do the same or better, like the one I'm on at the mo:
@SusanLewis If you aren’t comfortable with the Unix command line and editing system files on Linux, it’s going to be a very steep learning curve. Hosting fediverse servers is not something that has been packaged up in a “plug and go” way yet. You need to have a domain name, set up an HTTPS reverse proxy, an email server, database, etc.
@SusanLewis OK. You are gonna struggle to get it working then. Maybe someone will build a "home fediverse server" package that can run easily on a Mac or Windows machine, but they haven't yet, to my knowledge. It's currently a bit arcane.
[mobile.twitter.com] Here it is summarized: ----------- so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol).
Silo SPOILERS. DO NOT OPEN THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE READ AT LEAST THE SECOND BOOK
My brain won’t let nightmare go. Just imagining the RNC “longtermist” approach to silos is terrifying. Like schools: how would they combine vouchers and book bans?
At least the anti-union, “just work harder to get advancement” sentiment would go over great.
But then again, every hard right post-apocalyptic fiction ends up with collective ownership by the “good guys”.
@Miguel Arroz The one thing we know works in an encounter is dropping small explosives over the side. This makes them go away, and probably does them no harm, but the Spanish and Portuguese authorities get really pissy about it (mostly the Spanish to be honest), so open discussion of non-lethal methods for dealing with the situation has been difficult.
With the recent celebrity status the orcas has gained, it’s rapidly becoming impossible.
A lot of the blame for this lies with the Spanish maritime authorities who adopted a position of sanctimonious indifference to an escalating threat to marine traffic in their waters for years, until the behaviour had spread to nearly every pod of Iberian orcas. For about 2 years, it was literally just one or two individuals and could have been contained.
Now in winter, they migrate north. The French have demonstrated a rather more “hands on” approach, as demonstrated by one of the animals washing ashore in a river having been shot. 😞
sur que les Portugais sur les océans il ont rien prouvé😁 Diego suarez Diaz &1 certain magelan🤔 on raconte qu il aurait fait le ier vrai tour du monde.. Les Portugais ont colonisé le Japon chère sarah Brown..et quand on sait que les Japonais furent les premiers à défaire une armée de "blancs "(la Russie en l occurence) ça a du être sanglant.. Les anglais ont envahi la chine en la mettant sous opuim certes c est plus sweet😁 Avec leurs cliques françaises du napoléon 3 cela va de soit😉
The absolute best thing about running your own family Fedi server is that when you see wankers pop up on your posts, you can tell them that they’re wankers, tell them that they need to fuck off, and then server block and purge them.
@Richard Gadsden oh, that prick? I don’t think he does social media any more. He used to have a Facebook but blocking him on it starved him of the attention he apparently craves and he deleted his account.
If he’s stalking me now (and I have no reason to believe he is), he’s being very quiet about it.
In another place, there is a discussion about whether someone would leave the UK if money were no object.
There are lots of responses along the lines of, “I would be out of here faster than a blink”, but also plenty saying that people only think that the UK is a “shithole” because they aren’t wealthy.
I don’t think that’s right. I’m fairly wealthy, and like many of similar means I spent some time involved in UK politics as a decently high level. My experience is that it was full of people who wanted to improve things, but then were at some point offered a Faustian bargain: in order to have the power to change things, you need to be part of the British Establishment. To be accepted as part of that establishment, you must be willing to do what is required to perpetuate it.
The result is that the vast majority of people in the UK with the power to actually do anything are the ones who have either been willing to make a deal with the devil, or who are the devil.
The rest give up and walk away.
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In another place, there is a discussion about whether someone would leave the UK if money were no object.
There are lots of responses along the lines of, “I would be out of here faster than a blink”, but also plenty saying that people only think that the UK is a “shithole” because they aren’t wealthy.
I don’t think that’s right. I’m fairly wealthy, and like many of similar means I spent some time involved in UK politics as a decently high level. My experience is that it was full of people who wanted to improve things, but then were at some point offered a Faustian bargain: in order to have the power to change things, you need to be part of the British Establishment. To be accepted as part of that establishment, you must be willing to do what is required to perpetuate it.
The result is that the vast majority of people in the UK with the power to actually do anything are the ones who have either been willing to make a deal with the devil, or who are the devil.
My pronouns are: she/her My adjectives are: caprine/atopic My prepositions are: up/on My nouns are: Sarah/Elizabeth/Brown My verbs are: climb/sleep My interrogatives are: why/what
If all announced clean energy manufacturing projects are realised, solar & battery manufacturing already meet the needs for 2030 to stay on track for net zero. Wind, heat pumps & electrolysers are not yet on track but are expanding rapidly.
Data from International Energy Agency (IEA) graph from Energy Monitor.
Ok, so I need to say something about the orcas, or rather the response to them, because this is pissing me off.
There is a popular portrayal that they are somehow proxies for a class war hunting down and destroying the playthings of the rich, invading their habitat, and this is absolutely not what is happening.
There are two types of vessel that can broadly be described as "yachts". The first type are the ones you're probably thinking of: things owned by multi millionaires who cruise about living a life of unattainable luxury. These vessels have price tags that start at 7 digits for a modest one, and go up from there. They are owned by multimillionaires, centi-millionaires, and billionaires, and they are completely and utterly immune from orca attack.
This is because they are motor vessels. They steer by vectored thrust, or by directing propeller wash over a relatively small hydrofoil. As a result, there is nothing for the orcas to attack, and even if there was, these people don't like to be kept waiting on their way to Monaco or wherever. They h
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Ok, so I need to say something about the orcas, or rather the response to them, because this is pissing me off.
There is a popular portrayal that they are somehow proxies for a class war hunting down and destroying the playthings of the rich, invading their habitat, and this is absolutely not what is happening.
There are two types of vessel that can broadly be described as "yachts". The first type are the ones you're probably thinking of: things owned by multi millionaires who cruise about living a life of unattainable luxury. These vessels have price tags that start at 7 digits for a modest one, and go up from there. They are owned by multimillionaires, centi-millionaires, and billionaires, and they are completely and utterly immune from orca attack.
This is because they are motor vessels. They steer by vectored thrust, or by directing propeller wash over a relatively small hydrofoil. As a result, there is nothing for the orcas to attack, and even if there was, these people don't like to be kept waiting on their way to Monaco or wherever. They have power plants the size of road haulage vehicles and can outrun the orcas.
The second type, which are the boats that the orcas are attacking, are sailboats. These travel at about 5 knots, which is the cruising speed of an orca, and have huge rudders because they need to balance turning forces from the sails that power the boats. The smallest boats that are capable of sailing in the waters where these animals are have rudders comparable in size to an adult human. The orcas seem to regard these as prizes and love detaching them.
While the very rich sometimes do buy these kind of boats, they are not the typical person who does so. Most of them are bought second hand, and they have very long lives (a lot from the 1970s are still in perfectly good condition). They are generally bought for the price of a used car, or less A lot of people live on them and pay for mooring and maintenance fees by doing casual labour. This is still cheaper than renting a one bedroom flat in a lot of Europe.
I live in the area where these animals operate. Friends of friends have been attacked. They aren't "yachties", they're just people with day jobs who have enough disposable income to invest in a hobby they enjoy.
So either, best case, you are gloating at people of modest means facing a salvage and repair bill that they can't afford and is more than the value of the boat, or potentially you are laughing at terrified people watching their home and everything they own get sent to the bottom of the ocean by one of the most sadistic predators on earth, and who will then have to get in the sea with these predators which, if they're lucky, will decide to leave them to drown.
This doesn't make you an online class warrior, or the left-wing equivalent of an edge-lord. It just makes you an arsehole.
@legumancer Davy I’ve seen videos of them playing volleyball with seals before killing and eating them, and obviously having a great time doing it. If the shoe fits …
Thanks for this insight! It's really helped me understand what's going on with the Orcas and boats, and why it's a problem. I've thought about this post a number of times since seeing it a few days ago, so I wanted to come back and thank you.
I also appreciate your insight in one of the replies – that there's tagging, tracking, and communication going on to combat the problem and avoid encounters. I find that really interesting and resourceful.
@Acorn Squashbuckler It’s already paid dividends. We were notified last night that one pod has started migrating west. Before, the first we’d have known about it was when boats were suddenly attacked off Faro. Now we know to stay away.
@Noodlemaz You may not think playing volleyball with seals before killing and eating them isn't saidstic, but if so, you and I have very different definitions of that word.
Lots of dolphins in general are, let's be honest, bastards. Orcas aren't the worst dolphins, but they are certainly up there.
If you think that enjoying inflicting pain and suffering, and killing for enjoyment, is something that is unique to humans, then you're a fool.
Reddit just asked if I was enjoying it. I clicked “not really”, so it offered me feedback. I thus provided some:
You asked if I’m enjoying Reddit. I used to. Now it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, with the rush to “enshittify”. I hate that the trend in the tech industry is to race to r the bottom in terms of user experience in order to suck up to the money men, and I hate that you have declared war on your user base.
I'll admit it's been a while since I listened to the books, and I haven't watched the show. Do they not have anything to view the outside world in the show? I remember them describing watching the condemned going out and cleaning the camera lenses and acting happy.
The problem I have going faster is it all has to be technique. My poor 49 year old heart won’t actually go any faster. Graph below shows the speedrun ringed where my heart went to 175bpm for 8 minutes and stayed there.
I did feel while I was up there that my muscles simply couldn’t get the power they wanted. Maybe I can go faster in winter when heat dissipation is easier.
Saw young Dr Bacalhau (yes, that really is his name), the dental surgeon, today. In March 2020 I had a cracked tooth removed, with the intention that it would be replaced with an implant a few months later.
3 days later, the world went into lockdown. I never got the implant.
In the years since, I learned to live with the gap. It’s next to a tooth I lost for orthodontic reasons as a teen, so it’s quite a big gap.
But I have been told that the asymmetry in my bite and lack of support for adjacent teeth is causing a problem, so I need an implant.
Fist thing they did was a CT scan of my jaw. The resolution is really quite incredible. He showed me the 3D scan. Bicuspid next door has a really kinky root.
The bad news is, the jawbone there is only 6mm thick, and he wants 8-10mm.
So I need a bone graft. They scheduled me for one in September. Double appointment, done under local anaesthetic (not hugely looking forward to that, but I’ve had worse. Don’t ask. Really). He’s gonna do the graft (new technique I think - some sort
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Saw young Dr Bacalhau (yes, that really is his name), the dental surgeon, today. In March 2020 I had a cracked tooth removed, with the intention that it would be replaced with an implant a few months later.
3 days later, the world went into lockdown. I never got the implant.
In the years since, I learned to live with the gap. It’s next to a tooth I lost for orthodontic reasons as a teen, so it’s quite a big gap.
But I have been told that the asymmetry in my bite and lack of support for adjacent teeth is causing a problem, so I need an implant.
Fist thing they did was a CT scan of my jaw. The resolution is really quite incredible. He showed me the 3D scan. Bicuspid next door has a really kinky root.
The bad news is, the jawbone there is only 6mm thick, and he wants 8-10mm.
So I need a bone graft. They scheduled me for one in September. Double appointment, done under local anaesthetic (not hugely looking forward to that, but I’ve had worse. Don’t ask. Really). He’s gonna do the graft (new technique I think - some sort of synthetic scaffold), and put the screw in. Then 4 months later, they place the tooth.
Will be nice to have my ability to chew properly on the left side back.
Whole lot (including today’s consultation and CT) is going to come in at under 2000 euros, and my experience of Portuguese dentistry thus far is that they do really, really good work.
The HUDOC database provides access to the case-law of the Court (Grand Chamber, Chamber and Committee judgments and decisions, communicated cases, advisory opinions and legal summaries from the Case-Law Information Note), the European Commission of H…
We went to the V&A recently and saw their Korean Wave exhibit. One part spent time on the Korean beauty sector and the myth of the 10 step regime. They had a 3d printer for personalised face masks, which was interesting, but looked like a glorified plotter (either very limited or no Z axis).
Since there's so much snake oil in this area, and your face is so visible, people are willing to latch on to whatever hope they can.
It's interesting talking to people about skincare. From purely medical (I've a few friends that suffer from Psoriasis), through to managing effects of hormones (it comes up a surprising amount teaching teenagers), through to purely cosmetic.
I latched on to some "advice" from a (I think) GQ article in 2003ish. George Clooney was interviewed about skincare and he said to keep it simple. Use a face cleaner, scrub a few times a week, and use a SPF moisturiser daily. I've been happy with that advice.
You know you’ve turned a corner in language learning when the employee in McDonalds doesn’t switch to English in order to point out that you should have used the pluperfect instead of the perfect.
What if we, like, dig 50 really deep holes in Fulton County Georgia to put it in? I’m sure that would work out fine, right? abc.net.au/news/2023-05-26/tre…
Operators of the Fukushima nuclear power plant are set to release treated wastewater into the ocean. But already Japanese authorities are facing a barrage of criticism from fishermen.
Imagine being Jacob Rees-Mogg; he desperately wants to be Brideshead Revisted, but is actually an (albeit well read) idiot cousin of the Boswells in Bread, and all the upper class old money he sucks up knows it, and judges him for it.
He’s not like Nadine Dorries; going through life oblivious to her own stupidity. Jacob knows he’s both very very stupid and a transparent imposter who will never get what he wants: the acceptance of the inbred wazzocks he deifies, and it must utterly torment his every moment.
Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HBO Max, and countless more: we have reached the stage of late stage capitalism, web edition, where the fashionable thing to do, having eradicated your competitors, is to deliberately make your product utterly fucking useless.
I’m particularly noting that on Reddit, as communities start to shut down, the bulk of the notifications I’m getting there now are porn spambots following me.
#Musk shares video of pro-russian Tucker Carlson blaming Ukraine for #Kakhovka dam blast
Carlson has now launched his show on #twitter His first episode accused #Ukraine of destroying the Kakhovka dam. Carlson argued russia, occupying the east Dnipro bank, gained nothing as it would flood that very area.
Musk significantly increased the video's reach by sharing it. Before the retweet, Carlson's video had 57 million views; Musk added another 29 million
Twitter owner Elon Musk is amplifying the baseless claims of former Fox News television host Tucker Carlson – known for his pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian views.
@Ghost of Hope @Eugene McParland Yeah. I've followed him for ages and have always been excited about SpaceX, but he has just turned into a bigger and bigger twat as he got older and it's so very disappointing.
Whew! Lot of follow requests this morning. If I had a gripe about Friendica (actually, I have many but that’s the nature of using a really neat but ultimately cottage industry bit of social media software), it would be that it makes dealing with them all kinda long winded.
This is really weird, strange, & seems to this only very very occasional redditor to be EXTREMELY sudden. Has this been looming, or is there something in the water lately? @theory
@theory I find the idea fascinating that there might be some kind of watershed caused by Twitter's decomposition. Like, people are suddently skeptical of social media hype, & that translates into being skeptical about things they maybe shouldn't be that skeptical about. Like how a lot of solid companies cratered in the dot-bomb because the market lost faith in fundamentals. HP e.g. had a rock solid record of improving numbers for decades, but suddenly that wasn't good enough.
Once again, seeing the whole, "Fediverse is full of Europeans who keep refusing to frame social justice issues strictly from the point of view of USians and this is definitely very problematic everyone!" thing.
And I can't help thinking, "Have you tried taking your cultural imperialism and shoving it up your arse? Maybe that will help?"
@pmroman The first time I went to the US, I experienced massive culture shock. Sharing a language, I expected far more cultural compatibility but what I found just felt so very foreign, far more so than any European country I’ve visited even when I don’t speak a word of the local language.
To some extent I have the same issue with Brits who have never seen other cultures except as holiday destinations!
I have lived and worked in France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg and also spent 3 years living in Thailand.
In each of those countries I have learnt of the massive cultural differences that divide us one from another. Some are highly amusing, others deadly serious.
Some of my more narrow minded "stay at home" British friends accuse me of being a turncoat; of abandoning my 'Britishness' for 'Europeanism' and I guess that is true.
However, I am reminded of a friend of mine who is of Vietnamese origin and who was raised in Vietnam; only leaving to move to western Europe when she was about 20. Talking about the end of the Vietnam war, she referred to the defeat of the USA in Vietnam at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army, as "the liberation". I don't think too many Americans would see it that way. What you perceive depends on the point of view from which you perceive it!
I have learned not to answer you publicly, way too many people are finding me. It was a throwaway remark between friends! I didn't think anyone would notice!
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Ailbhe
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Alexandra Lanes
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Matthew Vernon
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in reply to Ailbhe • •@Ailbhe I do think there's a lot of, "when you point out that this is real humans I joke about wanting dead, it makes me feel bad and I'd rather you didn't do that" going on here.
The reason it pisses me off so much specifically, I guess, is because when this started happening I was anticipating bringing my boat here eventually, and followed the discussion groups, and now I've followed them for the last few years.
And some of the stories I heard, people were really fucking scared, you know? When the only people who knew about this were sailors and marine biologists and a few others, seeing videos of people cowering in terror and despair as this gang of enormous fucking sea monsters set about destroying the only thing keeping them from just drowning.
And the story of the family who evacuated to their life raft (being in an inflatable life raft is a wretched miserable experience: you are cold, you are wet, and you are almost certainly covered in your own vomit), beggi
... show more@Ailbhe I do think there's a lot of, "when you point out that this is real humans I joke about wanting dead, it makes me feel bad and I'd rather you didn't do that" going on here.
The reason it pisses me off so much specifically, I guess, is because when this started happening I was anticipating bringing my boat here eventually, and followed the discussion groups, and now I've followed them for the last few years.
And some of the stories I heard, people were really fucking scared, you know? When the only people who knew about this were sailors and marine biologists and a few others, seeing videos of people cowering in terror and despair as this gang of enormous fucking sea monsters set about destroying the only thing keeping them from just drowning.
And the story of the family who evacuated to their life raft (being in an inflatable life raft is a wretched miserable experience: you are cold, you are wet, and you are almost certainly covered in your own vomit), begging rescuers not to come near in case they brought the orcas back.
And then people tell me that I'm pissing them off because I think that laughing at these people is fucked up. Just ... no.
Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Kincaid
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@ailbhe and what do they think will happen when they do kill and eat some poor bastard?
The entire pod and every other one they ever went near is getting depthcharged to make sure that doesn't stick and get passed on...
Sarah Brown
in reply to Kincaid • •@Kincaid @Ailbhe yeah. If this doesn’t deescalate soon, it possibly ends in the extinction of the Iberian orca.
The Spanish marine authorities could have nipped this in the bud 3 years ago by culling 3 individuals, but decided malign indifference was a better approach because of the reason.