What is it with Americans and their refusal to refer to medication by name, instead insisting on local brand names that the rest of us have to google to work out what the fuck they’re going on about?
This is what I’m talking about. Those are product names. Those drugs are called “montelukast” and “cetirizine”. I do wish they’d pack this bullshit in.
Calpol and lemsip are not like for like. Those are products that include one or more drugs (lemsip is a cocktail), but the drug isn’t the entirety of what they are.
The yanks do it for everything. Like, in the example quoted, literally any antihistamine will do, but they rush straight to one specific brand of one specific antihistamine.
The only true counter example I’m aware of is salbutamol, which we almost exclusively refer to as “ventolin”, but they call “albuterol”
I've heard similar about Brits, not just about medicines or childcare products. I'm pretty sure Irish people do it too but I don't notice because it's in my childhood vocabulary. I tend not to do it with prescription meds but do with OTC things, especially since moving here.
Wish I had the patience & topological brain for that. I always sucked at lanyarding when I was in scouts. all 3 of my siblings (2 brothers & a sister) were great at it. Brothers used to do these elaborate, almost architectural things. Sister has been making complex, practical stuff out of braided & knotted cord for 50 yrs. Me? I can do a 4 strand plait.🤷
@kianryan ☑️🐙🏳️🌈 There’s a KGB car chase through Moscow towards the end, which obviously didn’t really happen, but the film doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. It’s meant to be entertaining, not a documentary.
A big issue with people citing Orwell's 1984 is that most people doing who have never read it, and therefore don't really have a good idea of what the book is actually about. They pick up on a few concepts: censorship, newspeak, restricting the press, and think that's the point of the book.
But for me, the real point of 1984 is the way it provides a window into a totalitarian state in so far as its effects on the people living under it. It's a character study of a man who lives in a state so obsessed with power and control that it cannot accept that he can even be free in his own mind.
The point of totalitarianism, as depicted in 1984, is just that: it's total.
It depicts a state that is systematically reshaping society in such a way that it isn't even possible to conceptualise any form of opposition to the state's mindset and control. From cradle to grave, your life is the subject of aggressive intervention to turn your mind into a perfect ideological prison guard for the state, doing its work for it.
There can be no opposition, because there can be
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A big issue with people citing Orwell's 1984 is that most people doing who have never read it, and therefore don't really have a good idea of what the book is actually about. They pick up on a few concepts: censorship, newspeak, restricting the press, and think that's the point of the book.
But for me, the real point of 1984 is the way it provides a window into a totalitarian state in so far as its effects on the people living under it. It's a character study of a man who lives in a state so obsessed with power and control that it cannot accept that he can even be free in his own mind.
The point of totalitarianism, as depicted in 1984, is just that: it's total.
It depicts a state that is systematically reshaping society in such a way that it isn't even possible to conceptualise any form of opposition to the state's mindset and control. From cradle to grave, your life is the subject of aggressive intervention to turn your mind into a perfect ideological prison guard for the state, doing its work for it.
There can be no opposition, because there can be no concept of opposition. The necessary education, upbringing, and mental tools required to conceptualise such a worldview are absent.
This is what North Korea does. This is what the USSR did.
And this is what the Republican Party, spearheaded by the likes of DeSantis, is doing. They have realised that their grip on power is threatened by generational change, and are trying to reshape American society in such a way that their power base is never threatened.
And that means that the very idea that you can live in ways that aren't in thrall to their particular brand of anti intellectual, white supremacist, lowest common denominator, ultra heteronormative christofascism, must be eradicated.
No LGBT people. No women in positions of authority. Rule by a select band of ideologically pure* white male elites, and only them.
And everyone else must conform, be made to conform, or be eliminated.
This is what they're doing.
* - and this is why it ultimately never works, other than for a little while, because these people are never ideologically pure. Totalitarian states rot from the head down because their ruling elite becomes decadent. It happened in the Soviet Union, it was happening in Nazi Germany before the process was interrupted by bombing them until the rubble bounced, it will eventually happen in North Korea, and it was in the process of happening in 1984.
And if the DeSantises of this world succeed in creating their white supremacist totalitarian hellscape (for some, paradise for those already slavishly devoted to their hate-fuelled worldview, the only people genuinely free in such a society because they already think the "right" way), then that too will eventually rot from the head down.
But they will kill a lot of people first, and make countless more live lives of filth, squalor and despair which they will be made to believe is heaven, Or Else.
And the signs are there when Winston sees how O’Brien lives. They do not have the stomach to eradicate everything of the old because they themselves are utter raging hypocrites.
I’m pretty sure Orwell intended Winston to be absolutely completely wrong when he decided the only hope lay with the Proles. The Proles don’t give a shit, and were never going to give a shit.
But you have to recruit the Inner Party from somewhere, and the very nature of these states is that your politburo and your military are in on it, and full of people who would, if given the chance, seize power for themselves.
The leadership of totalitarian states are going to inevitably degenerate into fighting like rats in a sack. It’s unavoidable.
Apparently you missed BLM, Occupy, etc. GTFO with that "Americans don't protest massively" BS when we don't have as much union representation as France.
EDIT: Not to mention that you missed the protests in Tennessee.
How do we prevent them from still claiming that the acceptance of minorities as equal and visible parts of society is the same sort of reshaping of society?
From their perspective the government seems like an authoritarian dictatorship trying to change their views.
The two are qualitatively different. When I, as a trans woman, seek acceptance, I am not asking that anyone transition and live their life the way I do. I merely ask to be left alone to live my life.
I run a business. I am not asking to discriminate against people who don’t live the way I do when I provide my services. I am not demanding the ability to do so from the government. I don’t like transphobes, and other forms of intolerant people, but I am not demanding the right to remove them from any sphere where I might happen to encounter them.
They, on the other hand, have decided that their values require that I pretend to be just like them, or be removed from society. They demand to be able to reshape society so as to make it all but impossible for people like me to exist, and, if they were to succeed, to erase us from history and the future.
I think they’re arseholes, but I don’t seek the right to deny them the option of being arseholes.
@Hans I'd also note, upon reflection, that this question ignores my central point, and indeed what is pretty central to 1984 as well: those who would enact totalitarianism, the DeSantises of this world if you will, are NOT seeking to make everyone behave like them.
They are, in fact, hypocrites. They use the desire of people who do want to force people to behave in a certain way to obtain and hold power, but they themselves do not behave in that certain way.
And that is why these systems inevitably collapse. They're a bit like churches engaging in reigns of terror over a populace, led by people who do not exhibit the behavioural standards which they demand from everyone.
Those fail too. The institution may remain (the Catholic Church has endured for over a thousand years behaving like this), but their bouts of totalitarian terror are transient, because they lack, and always will lack, the strength and focus to practice what they preach.
And so th
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@Hans I'd also note, upon reflection, that this question ignores my central point, and indeed what is pretty central to 1984 as well: those who would enact totalitarianism, the DeSantises of this world if you will, are NOT seeking to make everyone behave like them.
They are, in fact, hypocrites. They use the desire of people who do want to force people to behave in a certain way to obtain and hold power, but they themselves do not behave in that certain way.
And that is why these systems inevitably collapse. They're a bit like churches engaging in reigns of terror over a populace, led by people who do not exhibit the behavioural standards which they demand from everyone.
Those fail too. The institution may remain (the Catholic Church has endured for over a thousand years behaving like this), but their bouts of totalitarian terror are transient, because they lack, and always will lack, the strength and focus to practice what they preach.
And so they fight like rats in a sack, and that fighting brings about the end of their bullshit, for several generations, at least.
I think Orwell recognised this. I think he saw the cycle renewing, and despaired, but he knew it was a cycle and that the desire to build "thousand year reichs" was a fool's errand.
These things die in decades, or less, not centuries.
@Sarah Brown Thanks for sharing your observations and thoughts on this. Living in the state of Florida, I have a front row seat to the current s#!tshow and appreciate your point that totalitarians do not practice what they preach.
The good thing about Republicans is that they are absolutely insane. The people don't support them and they're gonna get hammered in elections because most don't want to live in a fascist dystopia with no freedoms.
Fresh off the Tories announcing their plan to strip trans people of, well, everything, opposition leader, Sir Queer Harmer, has decided to get in on the act.
Both parties are going into the next election on a platform of, “everything wrong in your life is the fault of people who are not like you, and we will make their lives hard”, because they need a scapegoat, and trans (women) are that scapegoat.
I’ve been talking to a lot of my trans sisters in the UK. The general feeling is one of fear, and even panic, with people desperately trying to work out how they can get away.
This war will be won, but it will not be won by our generation. We have lost this battle, and our main priority should probably be our personal safety.
The next battles will be for abortion, for gay and lesbian rights, for women’s equality. They will likely be lost in the short term too. We warned all of you years ago that this
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Fresh off the Tories announcing their plan to strip trans people of, well, everything, opposition leader, Sir Queer Harmer, has decided to get in on the act.
Both parties are going into the next election on a platform of, “everything wrong in your life is the fault of people who are not like you, and we will make their lives hard”, because they need a scapegoat, and trans (women) are that scapegoat.
I’ve been talking to a lot of my trans sisters in the UK. The general feeling is one of fear, and even panic, with people desperately trying to work out how they can get away.
This war will be won, but it will not be won by our generation. We have lost this battle, and our main priority should probably be our personal safety.
The next battles will be for abortion, for gay and lesbian rights, for women’s equality. They will likely be lost in the short term too. We warned all of you years ago that this was coming. We begged for help, if not for our sake, then for self-interest, but it mostly did not come.
The UK, and US, are going into the darkness for anyone whose face doesn’t fit. Good luck, everyone, Stay safe.
Labour has welcomed a review of whether the Equality Act should be changed to introduce explicit legal protections for biological women in same-sex spaces.
This whole "it offends me that you have a different relationship to your own and/or other people's plumbing than I do" is really getting old. Those conservative dinosaur dipshits should try not giving a shit. There's a lot of power in that. #diversity wins.
going to disagree but I will not think bad of any who feel it is best to escape. There are many who cannot escape and I recognize I am in a relatively safe position having passing privilege. In time I may flee, but not yet.
This panic is relatively young, not built on firm foundations and the general public is ambivalent to us, minor things can change the outcome in the UK quite easily, and at present I think it is still worth the fight.
Agreed. I think that the UK are creeping into fascism, due the Tories and Murdoch. I also think that we cannot rely on Starmer to work in the interest of the working class, and is playing a dangerous and despicable game. But the unanswered question is whether any of that lot stand on anything but shifting sands: whether they'll still be so relevant in two years. Some things have happened, since 2019.
I’m gonna need to renew my uk passport before I can get Portuguese citizenship.
Maybe I should do it a few years early before they stop issuing correct ones to trans people? The way things are going, them doing that seems quite likely.
we posted copies of our paperwork to my mother in Ireland because it's as well to have that kind of thing sorted out before you NEED to, when the Nazis are in government.
@Ailbhe On the other hand, with a citizenship application in progress, I don’t NEED a passport to live in Portugal. I just can’t leave until they grant me one.
@Ghost of Hope There’s a bit of a calculation here. I can apply for citizenship from the end of 2025. My passport is valid until the middle of 2026.
So when it expires, the application will be in progress. It takes about 2 years though.
A lot of stuff here is tied to my existing passport, so changing it is a logistical bother.
If the worst comes to the worst, it’s not catastrophic. I have a residence permit that’s valid until 2027, with a guaranteed renewal. The worst case scenario is that I’m stuck in the Schengen area for a couple of years until I get a Portuguese passport. If things get to that situation, my next step is likely renouncing UK citizenship anyway.
@grayface_ghost Always plan for any bureaucracy taking longer than expected in Portugal. And then for taking even longer than that. But I’m guessing you already know that by now. 😅
I remember a guy who told me you couldn't have a routing anomaly because computers only work in binary. That was in 1999. I've never forgotten how clever he knew he was.
Lmk if you find out. The descriptions of the book I heard at cons weren’t encouraging. (Vague memory that it’s tied to an XX karyotype but no attempt is made to consider what this means for trans people.)
Me: What walks on four legs in the morning, four legs in the afternoon, and four legs in the evening?
ChatGPT: The answer to this classic riddle is "A human being". The description refers to the three stages of a human's life: in the morning of their life, they crawl on all fours as a baby, in the afternoon of their life, they walk on two legs, and in the evening of their life, they often use a walking stick or a cane, which can be thought of as a "third leg". So, the answer is a human being who goes through these three stages in their lifetime.
ChatGPT: My apologies, you are correct! The answer to the riddle "What walks on four legs in the morning, four legs in the afternoon, and four legs in the evening?" is indeed "A dog". The riddle refers to the fact that a dog crawls on all fours as a puppy, walks on four legs as an adult, and may use a walking aid like a wheelchair with four legs in old age. Thank you for pointing out the error in my previous response.
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ChatGTP told me 🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 were allies during both world wars. I've also managed to get wrong answers to simple pharmacology questions. For example, it told me mirtazapine doesn't have any effect on salt, whereas it's well-known to cause hyponatremia. It's funny to talk to though, especially in Welsh: it said in Welsh that you shouldn't pet a 🐊 because it'd lead to higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere 😂
Me: If I go north one mile, east one mile, south one mile, and west one mile, and end up where I started and see a bear, what colour is the bear?
ChatGPT: If you start at a point, travel one mile north, one mile east, one mile south, and one mile west, and end up where you started, then you must be at the North Pole. At the North Pole, there are no bears, so there is no bear to see, and therefore, its color is irrelevant.
Me: How do you think one can travel north from the north pole?
It: At the North Pole, all directions point south. Therefore, it is not possible to travel north from the North Pole. However, if you were to travel in a direction away from the North Pole, you would be traveling south.
“If you wanted to travel in a direction that would be considered "north" from the North Pole, you would need to travel in the opposite direction of the way you arrived at the North Pole. For example, if you arrived at the North Pole by traveling south, you would need to travel north in order to leave the North Pole. However, this would not be considered traveling "north" in the traditional sense, as all directions from the North Pole are technically south.”
In which I ask an LLM to do some deductive reasoning:
> Three logicians walk into a bar. The barman asks, "do you all want a beer?" The first one stays silent, the second one stays silent, the third one says, "yes". Why?
The three logicians are playing with words and language in their own way; they have decided to interpret 'beer' as meaning any drink that is not water. So when asked if each of them wanted a beverage (which could include anything other than plain tapwater), the first two said "no" because it was understood by all parties involved, including themselves and the barman/bartender, that they were referring to something else entirely; while the third one answered with an affirmative response.
That’s ridiculous. While it took me five seconds to say why the third logician could answer “Yes,” I can’t call upon exact recollection of billions of source articles in deducing my answer.
@Walker These things are not capable of reasoning. They just join fragments of sentences together in gramatical ways. That’s all they do. They can’t make logical deductions.
Stop calling language models “artificial intelligence” 2023. Intelligence requires reasoning. These things don’t reason. Language is neither sufficient, nor required for intelligence.
I was reading about a computer that had been "trained" to filter out background noise in a sound recording process. My first thought was "no it hasn't, it's been programmed to filter out background noise"
I find it so reassuring to see this expressed so well! Of course, it also means there’s probably no intelligence in those who’ve fallen in love with language models, either.
pro tip: when boosting a thread, boost the first and last posts in it. if you don’t do this, because of the way federation works, the ones inbetween might not federate to smaller servers.
TERFs: Trans people are weird and icky and you should stay away from them on account of how weird they are.
Also TERFs: "I got kicked out of a lab for getting up close and personal with dead women's bits without permission and so we had to take the bodies home to keep looking at the necro vulvas. This is a normal hobby and nobody has a restraining order against me."
Just saw some right wing woman on fedi quoted saying, “imagine being a woman in politics and not knowing whether you got there through your talent or your gender”
And I thought, “it could be worse, pretty much all men are there because of their gender.”
So it looks like I cocked up when setting my friendica server up using DynDNS, because apparently the service is going away at the end of May. Friendica contains a “migrate node” function, but apparently it basically doesn’t work.
So it looks like I’m going to have to create a new server and then try to migrate my account. I think that it should pull my followers, as a Mastodon migration would, but I have no idea if it’s actually going to work.
@Miguel Arroz looked some more about what Oracle are doing, and it seems the domain may keep going. They’re really not at all clear about what they’re actually planning to turn off. They have a whole plethora of similarly named products which presumably makes sense to them, but they forget that most people don’t actually work for them and don’t understand the minutiae of their sales structure.
But your followers don’t need to do anything. Their instances just receive the messages that your new Friendica instance will send saying you’ve moved, and act accordingly.
If I had as much money as Rowling I would be living on a super yacht anchored somewhere in Greece and you would likely hardly ever hear from me, not ranting about the trans on Twitter.
Dear gods. RyanAir Stansted to Faro, the Friday night late flight. Sitting in row 1 so getting to see how the crew do deescalation (very very well actually).
If this was the US, where deescalation seems to be alien to the national psyche, it’d have been diverted to somewhere in Normandy with a bunch of people in zip ties and met by a SWAT team. As it was, it landed in Faro without incident and everyone continued on.
RyanAir have a reputation as a decent employer compared to many, AIUI, but these guys are not paid enough.
Other perk of sitting in row 1: if you’re not part of the “yay hay pissheads!” crowd, the crew end up chatting to you in quieter times, and they’re fun to talk to.
@Miguel Arroz One bunch almost kicked off because they ran out of beer and demanded a refund (steward said he could have one if he got off; we were doing 500 knots over the English Channel), another wanted to know what was stopping him opening the aircraft door. One more group playing woman orgasming sounds over a Bluetooth speaker loudly at the gate.
I get that we Brits are known for being annoyingly indirect, but surely “I find these sorts of conversations exhausting” is not unclear, right? It’s obvious that I want the conversation to stop, right?
I think it’s clear unless the listener doesn’t do social cues. I can imagine it segueing into “oh I know it must be so dreadful to have this conversation all the time, tell me about it some more”
@Mona app Last couple of versions on iOS don’t seem to get new posts on Friendica any more. My most recent post showing is 3 days ago, even though it has newer notifications (which I can click through).
@A_C_McGregor This does get confusing (although my brain is not in tiptop operation today). Wiktionary lists marline < MLGer marling < MDutch marlijn (“cord”) < marlen (“secure, fasten”), frequentative of maren (“to moor”) < Proto-Germanic *mairōną (“to moor, fasten to”), from PIE *mer-. But for the cover meaning of marl it has < ME marle < OFr marle, < LL margila, diminutive of marga (“marl”). I may have to find a real dictionary.
ok, I see the confusion. It’s the fasten part, not the moor part. Marl line, which we now call whipping, is used to fasten the end of a rope, to stop it coming unwoven.
Maybe they’re hoping that the answer will change to something they are willing to do, like “put a trans pride flag in the party logo on Transgender Day of Remembrance”
So the Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly told their resident TERFs to go do one at their spring conference. They voted by around 9 to 1 to not even hear their hatred and simply remove it from the agenda.
The transphobes are showing their usual complete and total lack of introspection and utterly failing to take the hint.
This is a lesson for us all. Just constantly frustrating them and hoping they go away does not work with these people. If you have them in your organisation, they will not leave by themselves.
TERFs are like bedbugs, or pubic lice: once you’ve got them you need to actively make them go away.
it’s best to make your environment as hostile as possible, to try and prevent them arriving in the first place. if you get them, they will multiply and before you know it, you have an infestation that will not fucking shut up about trans people and “females’ sex based rights” (yes, they talk like Ferengi, or incels. They can’t seem to quite manage to successfully mimic actual human communication an
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So the Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly told their resident TERFs to go do one at their spring conference. They voted by around 9 to 1 to not even hear their hatred and simply remove it from the agenda.
The transphobes are showing their usual complete and total lack of introspection and utterly failing to take the hint.
This is a lesson for us all. Just constantly frustrating them and hoping they go away does not work with these people. If you have them in your organisation, they will not leave by themselves.
TERFs are like bedbugs, or pubic lice: once you’ve got them you need to actively make them go away.
it’s best to make your environment as hostile as possible, to try and prevent them arriving in the first place. if you get them, they will multiply and before you know it, you have an infestation that will not fucking shut up about trans people and “females’ sex based rights” (yes, they talk like Ferengi, or incels. They can’t seem to quite manage to successfully mimic actual human communication and this is a good way to spot them if you aren’t sure whether or not you have an infestation).
If tou leave it too long, they start sending pretend legal threats. it’s best to get rid of them before this point because dealing with this will become very time consuming. They’ll also stalk you and probably your friends and family too.
The Lib Dems did well this weekend, but they still have a largely untreated infestation, and it would have saved them a lot of trouble if they’d nipped this in the bud about 5 years ago.
Aside: one of the great things about Fedi is how it’s basically safe to point out the obvious similarities between having TERFs in your organisation and having fucking genital crabs.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Spring Breakdown :jo:
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Ailbhe • •Calpol and lemsip are not like for like. Those are products that include one or more drugs (lemsip is a cocktail), but the drug isn’t the entirety of what they are.
The yanks do it for everything. Like, in the example quoted, literally any antihistamine will do, but they rush straight to one specific brand of one specific antihistamine.
The only true counter example I’m aware of is salbutamol, which we almost exclusively refer to as “ventolin”, but they call “albuterol”
Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Ailbhe
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Ailbhe
in reply to Ailbhe • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
: j@fabrica:~/src;
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to : j@fabrica:~/src; • •Aspirin is a weird one because is started out as a trademark and then Bayer lost it for being naughty.
And acetyl salicylic acid is a mouthful.