Liffguard

Yep. I want to be careful here, because I don't want to imply that measures that target trans people are only bad because cis people also get caught in the crossfire. Measures that negatively affect or target trans people are bad entirely on their own merits. But it is also true that cis people will find themselves getting targeted by the same measures, and therefore even cis people who don't care about trans issues or are even actively anti-trans should think carefully about the standards they seek to enforce. As pointed out above, cis female athletes who are deemed insufficiently feminine (which, let's be honest, frequently overlaps with race) are vulnerable to being targeted. Cis women in public who are deemed insufficiently feminine can (and have) be accused of using the "wrong" bathroom. We've seen attempts in the USA to force participants in childrens' sports to undergo physical examinations (read: genital inspections) before being allowed to participate. Attempts to single out trans people will end up hitting a lot of cis people who don't fit 100% into their assigned gender roles (and again, it would still be bad even if this wasn't the case), and these attempts will of course also just by weaponised by cynics and chancers.

See also Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant's latest book.

It is art, it just sucks. The product itself is ugly, it contributes to a flattening and smoothing of our collective culture, and it increases economic precarity for working creatives. It's bad art with negative social effects, but that doesn't make it not art. PS: I also just want to push back a little on the variations of "I'm not a Luddite but..." type statements. I want to make it clear I explicitly am a Luddite.

Echoing others, I've been there as well. It suuuuucks, no doubt about it. I think @Toth is right, cutting off contact might be the right idea for now, but it definitely doesn't have to be forever.

I know it's not your intention to imply being trans is a disability, but this is still an extremely unfortunate comparison.

There aren't any factories, they'll be picking fruit and running scam call centres.

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.