Liffguard

Pretty sure I saw the Fae Fannies open for the Sorcerous Schlongs at Download festival once.

During my recent stateside visit I actually got to see two cybertrucks in the wild. My first thought was that in real life they're even uglier than pictures and videos suggest. My second thought was the body rusting issue is very much not exaggerated.

I think the leadership of Israel and its backers should think very very hard about whether they want to live in a world where diplomatic offices are considered valid military targets, especially in situations where two countries aren't formally at war.

Not sure if it's good or bad for our political system's legitimacy and long-term viability when it's considered a bad thing - not just bad, but illegitimate, laughable really - for people to actually participate in politics beyond ticking a box every five years.

My dad is currently in hospital. He doesn't normally use a tablet but he asked me to bring my mum's old ipad up to him so he could read his various newspaper subscriptions and watch netflix while he recovers. I wanted to deliver it to him fully charged. It's one of the ones with a USB-C slot. So I plugged it in, it didn't charge. No worries, dodgy charger, tried a different one. Didn't charge. Tested the charger on my phone, charged just fine. Maybe the charging port on the ipad is busted? Eventually discovered that while the ipad has a USB-C shaped charging port, it's not universal. It will only charge with an Apple branded USB-C charger, thus defeating the entire point of moving away from a proprietry standard to a universal one. I fucking hate Apple so much. They also started the lunacy of removing audio jacks from devices. Literally paying more for reduced functionality.

It's a point that's been made before, but austerity is the thing we can't afford. Austerity has made the public financial situation worse. It's kicked necessary infrastructure spending down the road, creating greater long-term costs in favour of limited short-term savings. It's choked growth and stirred social unrest, and hollowed out state capacity. Promising more austerity is the crazy, unrealistic promise. More public investment is the sober, sensible position.

Money which Starmer and Reeves have largely ruled out spending. I'm sorry, but this is the core of the objection. The left-wing objection to Starmer is that there are certain policy priorities that need to be enacted to start reversing the damage of austerity, and that he has mostly ruled-out enacting them. Exactly, and the left-wing objection to Starmer is that we are unconvinced he's going to actually do anything about these problems. To put it in the most ultra-simplified terms possible, Corbyn had bad electoral politics, but good policy. Starmer has good electoral politics (debatabely, it's a point of discussion the extent to which current polling success is down to factors that are largely external to him, but let's allow if for now for the sake of argument) but bad policy. And we don't want a government that enacts what we consider to be bad policy. That's really the core of it.

There are plenty of points to argue here, but they're all orthogonal to the point I'm making. I'm not here to relitigate the Corbyn years, and indeed the discussion I'm trying to have isn't about Corbyn. Starmer can stand on his own merits, and criticism of Starmer can be made on its own merits, without having to kneejerk respond "but Corbyn." Re the first bolded, the problem isn't that he's uninspiring (he is, but it's irrelevent). The problem is that he's promoting bad policy and harmful ideology. Maybe it's all a ruse to get elected and he'll swing left in power? I guess that's not impossible, but I remain highly sceptical. I think this is who he actually is. Re the second bolded, this is true, but again, the corollary is that the purpose of winning elections is to enact policy. It's no achievement to win, and then continue the very policies that have led to our current problems. And people who want different policies are well within their rights to criticise, and to leave the party if they feel it no longer represents them or serves as a vehicle for the change they want to see enacted.

I honestly really love the SyFy adapation. It's cheap and cheesy as hell, and the acting veers between wooden and melodrama. But it's earnest, and theatrical (literally, it comes across as a filmed stage play), and I adore the costumes and the general visual design. I think it really nails the pomp and opulence.

As always, relevant xkcd.

This isn't really true. He was pretty critical of Corbyn during his time as labour leader, and wrote an entire book about the Corbyn leadership period that is far from hagiographic. He's currently vocally critical of Starmer and his leadership team, with good reason IMO, but that's an entirely different thing from uncritical support for Corbyn. And indeed, it's weird how Corbyn is always brought up as some kind of reflexive dismisal whenever Starmer is criticised, as if it's somehow illegitimate to criticise Starmer on the merits. As if politics is a team sport and everyone can be broken down into supporters of our guy and supporters of their guy, so any criticism of our guy has to be deflected by dunking on their guy. Okay, so since (for example), a supermajority of British voters support nationalisation of essential utilities, it makes sense that both major parties are currently competing with each other to be the government that introduces that. Except, of course, they aren't. And this is true of a whole host of other policies. There is a clear disconnect between what the public acutally wants and what the Westminster set is willing to do. And to be frank that goes equally for things I personally support (e.g. nationalisation) and things I don't (e.g. immigration restrictions). The idea that an election is some kind of intellectual market stall where everyone lays out their proposals on a free and fair playing field and the end result is some kind of representative microcosm of the public will is just not borne out by our actual results. Okay, and while a lot of people in the UK support a lot of the same policies as Corbyn, he did ultimately fail to convice enough of them to vote for the Labour party. That's fair enough. The thing is, if you hold a political philosophy that you believe will ultimately make for better lives for the people in the country, and you lose, the sensible response should be to change your strategy about how you you convince people, not ditch the philosophy for whatever you think will win, even if it doesn't actually make things better. And that's fundamentally what the argument is about. Labour under Starmer is looking extremely likely to win the next general election. It might even be one of the biggest landslides of all time. It's looking likely that this will be due to an utter collapse in Tory support rather than a growth in Labour support, but whatever, a win is a win. But what is winning political office for? People criticise Starmer because he gives every indication of pursuing policies that will continue the UK on its current path. Yes, Corbyn lost, and yes, Starmer will probably win. But winning only matters if you use it to improve people's lives. Starmers critics believe, rightly or wrongly, that the policies Starmer will pursue won't do that. You can agree or disagree with them on that, but can you at least accept that it's fair and legitimate to leave a political party that no longer shares your political philosophy? Why would a left-winger stay in a party that promotes (what they perceive to be ) right-wing policy?

I have a friend who always flies to Poland for dental work.

It's a genuine problem. Digitial storage does not actually appear to be all that durable long-term, contrary to the idea that something is effectively permanent once it's on the internet. I would suggest that if you've already paid for the tracks once and now lost them, there's nothing unethical in just pirating them now to restore them. But of course, in the age of streaming, there's significantly less demand for pirated music and therefore no guarantee that you'd actually be able to find the same tracks again anyway. In essence, in the digital age it's apparently suprisingly easy for a particular piece of art or culture to just...disappear.

True. Not true. It took air strikes supporting ground operations for that. And not solely from the US. I think Bret Devereaux did a pretty decent overview on the limits of strategic air power. TLDR, using air power alone to achieve strategic goals has a very poor track record. Look, I don't want nuclear weapons to proliferate further. People sometimes talk about the threat of nuclear annihilation as if it ended in 1991, when that is very much not the case. The weapons still exist, and the more parties who have them, the more complex the situation becomes, the more likely circumstances line up in such a way that they get used. I do not want more states to get nuclear weapons. But the reasons states pursue nuclear weapons is because they frankly have a very rational security incentive to possess them. And there appear to be a lot of people in the US - including lots of powerful, prominent people - who really, really seem to desperately want a war with Iran for some reason. And it's frightening, because a war with Iran would be a fucking disaster for everyone. So Iran has very rational reasons to develop a nuclear weapon. And in the long run the best way to counter that is to allay those security fears.

If it were up to me, organisations would be banned from donating entirely, only donations from individuals allowed, with a maximum of £500 per person per year.

"Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do this." I genuinely don't know if you're just doing a bit, but gung ho American defaulting to "let's solve this problem with lots of bombs" is a little on the nose, no?

Do you think maybe that frequent rhetoric similar to this from multiple American politicians and media outlets over the years (along with seeing what happened to Saddam and Gaddafi) might possibly constitute a very strong incentive for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program? Do you think that the USA adopting your position might constitute a very strong incentive for Iran to develop functioning nuclear weapons as quickly as they possibly can, no matter the cost? Like, I know you're being facetious, but come on.

To be fair I think there's a qualitative difference between these and social media platforms which a) deeply surveill their users and b) algorithmically push content designed to maximise eyeball time above all other factors. Not that Tiktok is unique in that obviously.

Cargo cult storytelling. Trying to imitate the form of the original story without understanding the underlying mechanics.

Back in 2016, PJ O'Rourke said about Hilary Clinton vs Donald Trump, "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters." I guess that's kind of how I feel about May. In fact, I've taken it to be a somewhat useful rubric for assessing how much and in what ways I disagree with someone. Some people I can't even disagree with as such, because we exist in effectively totally different reality spheres. There's definitely a large contingent of the current Tories who fall into that category.

It's an honest question. Terrorism is a notoriously slippery concept to define properly. Is there a clear distinction between a terrorist and a guerilla fighter? Is a guerilla fighter necesserily less morally praiseworthy than a uniformed soldier? Is the difference between terorrisim and "legitimate" military violence in the choice of target? Is it in possessing the sanction of a recognised state? Is a terrorist who suicide bombs a civilian street to be condemned and a military pilot who drops a bomb on a civilian street to be praised? All genuinely thorny questions IMO. Not as easy as praiseworthy soldiers and despicable terrorists.

First, what is terrorism? Secondly, even if we extend our special appreciation only to the uniformed armed personnel of legitimate states, does that include the invaders of Ukraine? Iraqi soldiers invading Kuwait?

Again, was that what I said? You said that you think soldiers are special because they put their lives on the line. I pointed out that lots of people put their lives on the line in pursuit of evil. Therefore, putting one's life on the line should not automatically be worthy of respect.

I didn't compliment their bravery, I pointed out they put their lives on the line. I was implying that the mere act of risking or sacrificing one's life is not inherently noble or worthy of respect. The respectability of an action also has to be judged in the context of the broader cause that the action is in aid of.

Did I say that?