Humanity throughout history is beset by fuckers. Right now, for example, we have overtly homicidal fuckers like Putin and Netanyahu, would be homicidal fuckers like Trump, and common or garden “hoarding all the money like some fucking dragon or something” fuckers like Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc.
There are also lots of other variety of fuckers: hatemongering fuckers like Farage, Murdoch or LePen: grifting fuckers swinging a wrecking ball at society because mummy didn’t like them or something.
And it seems to me that the problem is that for every fucker who gets to encounter the “and find out” stage: Hitler, Charles I of England, Louis XVI, etc, there are more for whom the only people finding out are the rest of us who have to live (or die) with their fuckery: Stalin, countless people with that Hapsburg chin, Henry Ford, and so-on.
I honestly think the world would be a much better place if fuckery were inherently a much higher risk strategy, and far less likely to leave all the important fluid pipes running through the neck intact (this i
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Humanity throughout history is beset by fuckers. Right now, for example, we have overtly homicidal fuckers like Putin and Netanyahu, would be homicidal fuckers like Trump, and common or garden “hoarding all the money like some fucking dragon or something” fuckers like Musk, Bezos, Thiel, etc.
There are also lots of other variety of fuckers: hatemongering fuckers like Farage, Murdoch or LePen: grifting fuckers swinging a wrecking ball at society because mummy didn’t like them or something.
And it seems to me that the problem is that for every fucker who gets to encounter the “and find out” stage: Hitler, Charles I of England, Louis XVI, etc, there are more for whom the only people finding out are the rest of us who have to live (or die) with their fuckery: Stalin, countless people with that Hapsburg chin, Henry Ford, and so-on.
I honestly think the world would be a much better place if fuckery were inherently a much higher risk strategy, and far less likely to leave all the important fluid pipes running through the neck intact (this is a traditional “and find out” method throughout history, but far from the only one), but alas, the fuckers are the ones who by and large get to structure our society, and they do their best to ensure it’s structured in a way that keeps finding out as far from them as possible.
Just seems to me that the proportion of fuckers is related to the risk inherent in the strategy of fuckery, and that risk is far too low right now, hence the high and frankly unsustainable level of fuckery we encounter in our time.
I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number of lower-level fuckers meet with 'misadventure' after causing a sufficient level of desperation in the wrong people. Pissing against the wind and all that. Sadly, that is less likely to happen on the political level.
Available on rough trade records: https://shopusa.roughtraderecords.com/artists/view/name/jarvis-cockerRunning The World can be: Streamed via Spotify ➤ https...
There was a time in Palestine pre Oslo where waving the Palestinian flag was against the law and Palestinians were arrested and jailed for doing so. Apparently it became a custom to wave slices of watermelon instead. mastodon.social/@Lazarou/11121…
When one of the West's most ghoulish fascists in government says they have your back perhaps it's time to stop and think? #UKPOL #Tories #SuellaBraverman #FreeSpeech
Incidentally, the ban is still in place in the 80% of the West Bank still under Israeli military law. Military Order 101 says: “It is forbidden to hold, wave, display or affix flags or political symbols, except in accordance with a permit of the military commander”. (Source btselem.org/demonstrations/mil… )
Over the past decade, the Overton window has shifted so drastically that it is now considered acceptable in mainstream discourse to advocate for the eradication of Palestinians, liken them to animals and place blame on them for their own deaths
Seems horrible. Like First Nations being robbed by Europeans from their lands through genocide, now in real time, an occupation, theft and extermination of human beings presented as something acceptable...
The Israeli government has cut off food, water, and fuel to 2 million people inside Gaza as part of its campaign to stamp out Hamas terrorism. Collective punishment is not only contrary to international law, it is inhumane and illogical. It is what my community once endured in World War II, all because of the actions of others who happened to share our ethnicity. Have we learned nothing? How will this possibly help deescalate the violence rather than radicalize many more? It is madness.
@ajlanes Don't get me wrong, I think it is terrible that people are captured inside a warzone. But I also think it is terrible to put all the blame on Israel.
@Jan Tovar Well, it puts the kibosh on supplies coming in. Regarding people coming out, Egyptian authorities were concerned at the calls from some quarters in Israel for Gazans to resettle in Sinai. Nobody serves the people well in all this.
@ajlanes I will not judge the whole situation because my knowledge about it is not profound enough. I am just very sure that jewish people deserve a country to live in and that neighbours of Israel want to erase that country. Which is why I can understand military consequences by Israel even though I don't like it.
it has been about moving Palestinians from Palestine for a half century. Ideally, through driving them into other countries or other means. Netanyahu and the rest of his government are in their element now. They love war.
I do NOT support Hamas and never would. They aren't for the health and safety of Palestinians. They used the ineffectiveness of the Arafat and the later government as an in road.
As well as the desperation one feels for the Palestinian people there is the immense sadness that so few in the West seem moved by it. The silence of so many is deafening.
Millenials are Killing Capitalism did a good show on this difficult topic. One main point was that there aren't just fash units fighting for Ukraine, but socialists and anarchists as well. Leftists on the front lines defending their homes. Being anti-war and avoiding western left-splaining is the challenge. Here's a link: millennialsarekillingcapitalis…
UPDATE: Transcript of the episode is now available . In this episode we interview Karim from and author Wendy Trevino. Karim is an anti-prison, anti-police anarcho-communist. And an author of the book .
Amidst the performative cries of “Israel has the right to defend itself”, it seems to be heresy to acknowledge the humanity of the few million people who get to live, in perpetuity, as Israel’s ritual punching bag, and are expected to do nothing in response, nothing in prevention, and accept the blame for others doing literally anything.
And even saying this will just result in tedious wankers going, “oh, you support terrorism then?”
The way the Palestinian people are treated is some serious Omelas shit.
You don't even need to say anything. The Tories are currently on a cancellation rampage trying to find opposing politicians who have yet to spout the performative line.
When the state of Israel was formed there was still a significant Palestinian area. Subsequent invasions and occupations by the state of Israel means there is very little left. Even Gaza, which is tiny compared to Israel is now half the size it was. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fights. They have been invaded, occupied, controlled and had food, power and water controlled by a far more significantly armed nation. And although I can’t condone the murder of innocent civilians BY EITHER SIDE, I can understand the desperation in this action.
@Sarah Brown The main thing I remember from visiting Gaza was how full it was, and how closed in it felt. Border fences on three sides, sea on the fourth (but restricted). Even in the heady days of 1994 just post Oslo it felt like a cage. Sometimes the electricity would go off. You had to queue in the heat to get in or out, divided families shouted news to each other across the barbed wire fence. That was probably the high point of freedom. The thirty years since have raised a generation whose hopes for the future keep getting blown up and locked down at the jailers’ whim.
For UK readers desiring a sense of scale, this is the boundary of the Gaza Strip (area 365 km^2, population 2m) rotated so it can be overlaid on the Isle of Wight (area 381 km^2, population 140k).
49K likes, 339 comments - emilyscartoons on July 4, 2019: "Scroll ➡️ Yes I know I post this every year but God dammit it's my favourite thing I've ever ..."
1. 'AND', the most powerful word in any language? Sharon Astyk (a Jew by marriage) wrote the following rules for discussing #Israel / #Palestine / War in a FB group she administers.
"Hi Folks. I just want to set down rules for any discussion of Israel/Palestine/ProtoWWIII. Here are the rules. 1. MORE THAN ONE THING CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME, INCLUDING BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY: #Jews were mass murdered over and over again and have a justifiable fear of being murdered again AND that fear has made us do horrifying things to the Palestinians over and over again that are not justified in any way. Jews have lived in Israel for thousands of years, and have a historic claim to it AND we use religious language and assumptions that may be mythological to most. AND real Palestinian people lost their homes unfairly. More than one people can have a historic claim to the same place.
Bit pissed off with the EU for the “solidarity with Israel” posts. Solidarity with the Israeli citizens maybe, but with the state? Nopenopenope. Bet they don’t express solidarity with Palestine when Israel piles in and levels half the city again.
Newsreel footage of the aftermath of the 1952 Train Crash at Harrow & Wealdstone Station, which claimed the lives of 112 people and injured hundreds more.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, in the city of Pittsburgh, there was a nickname for guys like John Moon – The Unemployables. This nickname meant that you simply could not get hired, no matter where you went for a job.
super interesting! Amazing to see the parallels to the Freedom House Ambulance Services - a black community revolutionizing how ambulances work: 99percentinvisible.org/episode…
And since it comes out of Combat Medicine you can track so much back to WW1, with connections to ARP and Civil Defence in WW2. But my views are biased by half-remembered stories told by my parents and grandparents.
I see that the Rishi Sunak announcement of new local transport to use the money "freed up" from cancelling HS2 includes a new tramline in Manchester to Roundthorn. The reason that TfGM proposed that tramline is that Roundthorn is the planned location for the HS2 Manchester Airport station.
@John Loader People need to stop thinking about the speed. HS2 is, and always was, designed to separate mainline and local traffic. That's what it's for.
It was envisaged as an LGV because that's what you do these days. There's no point building a new intercity line at less than LGV spec.
@Fish Id Wardrobe Lord Torydonor. This isn't corruption because money laundering taxation into your party coffers via your mates' bullshit companies is apparently a perfectly legitimate thing to do, because corruption is what they do in Africa.
In theory both the East and West Coast main lines were upgraded to 140mph - hence tilting trains. They weren't. Welwyn viaduct needs a by pass - 2 tracks in the middle of a four track network ridiculous
@John Loader Welwyn is ... difficult to solve. Not just logistically, English Heritage don't want a viaduct spoiling the view of the viaduct, because viaducts.
@OddOpinions5 Yep. A corrupt Tory called Marples owned large stakes in road construction businesses, and coincidentally commissioned a “captain of industry” Dr Richard Beeching to recommend the closure of about 1/3 of the then extant railway network (and over half the stations).
@ajlanes The four track also stops at Northallerton going North from York, a heavily used route but there were plans to add a third line and platform as a short loop for stopping trains there. But trains towards Teesside have to cross both main lines
Maybe it started like the way 15 and 16 are sometimes written as 9+6 or 9+5 in Hebrew numerals rather than 10+5 or 10+6 to avoid a Name? This could also explain the reluctance to explain?
Demande récurrente qui m'embarrasse le plus : "Bonjour est-ce que vous avez des bulles pontificales concernant le prieuré médiéval de Saint-Trucmuche ?"
Alors.
Je vois pourquoi vous pensez qu'on aurait ça hein. On pourrait croire. Oui.
Mais. Est-ce qu'on a ça. Euh.
Peut-être. Ça dépend un peu de quand elle est, votre bulle. Et un peu de ce que vous voulez dire par "bulle". Ou de ce qu'ils entendaient alors par là. Et même si on l'a pas ça veut pas dire qu'y'a pas nulle part. Faut voir.
Do fruit flies remember their larval lives? To find out, scientists made the neurons inside larvae glow, then tracked how they reshuffled as they formed adult brains.
I did a long run at an easy effort this morning. About half an hour in, I encountered this graffito, a clear reminder to do most of your #running at low effort.
Pondering tiredness and how it seems to be working with me at the moment. I had a long day visiting Brighton on Wednesday and so it didn't seem unreasonable that I was a bit sleepy the following day. I did a bit of OU work and life admin stuff and watched TV. Today, two days on, the tiredness feels mental, as if the physical body is fine but the brain wants a time out and is kind of noping out of doing very much at all.
Big uptick in new people here from Twitter - WELCOME PALS, I hope you enjoy it here as much as I am.
For those unfamiliar with the fediverse, the most important thing to note is that favs do absolutely nothing to help me pay my bills. Please boost my toots. Feel free to mock the way that sounds till you're blue in the face, as long as you still boost my toots.
i was going to make a "dont mess with my toot toot/please boost my toots" joke, but I fear no one else remembers this slice of 1985 classic music youtu.be/ZL3Wwo6RGyw?si=SxAomc…
Great point! Posts only propagate here through boosts! There is no algorithm here to show popular posts. A post appears on the timeline then goes away quickly unless others boost it to keep it alive.
Is that the world's first practical electric railway, wot inspired tophatted folk down from London to use the electricalness underground, wot I spot in the background?
Grr. You buy a ticket with Apple Pay on your phone and it turns out to be a paper ticket like it’s the 19th Century or something. So I have to collect it from the machine. Which wants the bank card with which I paid for it. Which is impossible since I used Apple Pay.
(Fortunately any bank card will do and the assistant put hers in, but but but)
ah, that explains something that's worried me for a while. I often buy tickets using PayPal and at the machine I offer up my Amex card (which is probably the funding source for PayPal) and the machine accepts it. I wondered how it knew ... sounds like it doesn't.
Weird dream last night that I had an adaptor that exposed the contents of my phone to GEM via the Atari ST cartridge port. My subconscious needs to get out more
While I might be sceptical of some of the dodgy metaphors (putting concepts in my constitutional bag?) and iconography (toothpaste symbolises a convention, apparently), the subject matter of this OU Public Law module is fascinating. Via a "go search for something to do with the constitution" exercise I came across this article about constitutional conventions. This sort of nitty gritty, the analysis if you like of the "meta-rules" of the constitutional game, is definitely something I am here for. ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cd64…
The Atlantic magazine has created a searchable database from the dataset 'Books3' used to create generative A.I. systems. This dataset was created from 'books free online' - in other words, pirated works.
Authors who write licensed work/tie-ins, please to check for your names. When you find work for Warhammer, Star Trek, Stargate, Halo, etc listed, do please inform their lawyers. For example, I just looked up Dan Abnett (great writer, lovely person, do read his work!)
so your problem is that a book wasn’t bought for $6 or that book was read, because First Sale doctrine is a thing, and I’m sure you learned to write by reading. But if you didn’t, I apologize and would love hear that story.
@jonathankoren No, my problem is that my work product and intellectual property has been taken without permission or payment and used for a purpose which no contract I have ever signed has authorised, or would ever authorise. 'Fair use' is also a thing and so is copyright. This is business and I am not interested in false-equivalence excuses for this wholesale theft from thousands of authors.
I want to see authors screaming like foxes about AI scraping as much as, and probably more than, they carried on about ebook piracy during the Macmillan debacle.
@bunnyjadwiga I want to see Disney, Games Workshop, Microsoft etc realising the damage this could potentially do to their reputations and income - and coming down on the techbros like the proverbial tonne of bricks.
I've done some searching, but can't find the original books3 dataset. I want to send the curators a takedown notice. Any chance you know who maintains the dataset or where they can be reached?
@mwl I have seen it said that the dataset has already been taken down, but I have no more information than that, and have no idea how solid that might be.
Very cool tool by Atlantic. Their tool improves the transparency of the 'Books3' data set. It's something the creators of the dataset probably should have done themselves.
This is the main motorway from Gothenburg to Oslo. Happened overnight. (before 2023-09-22 02:00) EDIT: rescue services commander is saying 4 cars & a bus drove into it. And "half the Burger King" is part of the landslide. Rescue efforts underway. Those cars & bus have been searched. 3 ppl sent to hospital. Seemingly no deaths, thankfully.
First person to call 112 was standing in the way to stop ppl driving into it, says same commander.
Results of the Big Butterfly Count show that butterfly numbers have increased this year after the wetter summer, with numbers at four-year high. But habitat loss is still causing long-term decline
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Jarvis - Running The World
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