…ok
…stevie-boy is…I mean…there’s something diagnostically untethered about the little gremlin that could, right?
…oh, wait…the judge…isn’t a guy
…it’s horrifying & terrifying & all sorts of big-ticket awful…but…also…supremely childish, somehow…just constantly “you don’t get to tell me what to do – I tell you what to do”…the way a toddler says that to a parent…&…I dunno…but the met arrested the better part of 500 people yesterday for protesting…to go with the 1,000-odd they did last time those were in direct or adjacent support for a group they labelled as terrorists on a basis that they say they can’t tell us about to explain the jump from anything they’re publicly known to have done to deserve that…whereas…when it was probably the single biggest pro-right-wing-extremism thing that had more people than mosley could get to buy a blackshirt…where elon “I can incite a riot & claim via satellite that the british state wants to murder its citizens & they have only a choice between dying & going to war with it” musk dials in for jumbotron zoom meeting…& attendees actually attack enough police seriously enough to put a number of officers in the hospital…that arrest tally…about…25
…the deadline for the next general election…so the longest labour could leave it until…is the middle of august ’29…a little shy of 4 full years away…so…if you, as is traditional, treat with the known-bad-faith-source on a good faith basis…you can argue that they’re trying to nobble starmer the way the press prefer partisan plotting & briefing-against in a constantly-stabbing-one-another-in-the-back death by a thousand cuts bloodletting that’s a semi-formal aspect of the turnover in the tory leadership since…before thatcher, probably…but…that might be the one enough people still count in living memory as the main reason they think that’s a powergame that they should be proud of…like it makes people feel big & clever to talk about how plausible it is that now they personally find it plausible & not offensive to the very idea of the nation…nige will probably get to have a go next…it’s a lock…4 years out…& why?
…well…you’ve got your government of the day…stepping on some pretty sizable rakes…even if you wanna be a fan…which I dunno as I would…post getting fucked in coalition with the tories the lib dems aren’t exactly in contention for running the show…but…labour probably needs a different brand spokesperson by the time they go there…which…somehow…nobody is saying the tories do…even though batshit-crazy-black-lady seems weirdly the furthest you could get from woo-ing the farage-curious back into the fold…the SNP in the sort of north that thinks andy burnham is a southerner hasn’t made enough scots happy to hold their near-lock on the westminster seats…& you got some greens with a shiny new guy…& whatever…or however many they wind up with when we find out if their two biggest names can get along in one party they’re calling yours & clearly both think of as theirs…&…mathematically…it remains possible to be first past enough posts that you could hold an outright majority in parliament with between 25-30% of the votes cast on the day…so…nige *could* get there…so…what…we should all be talking like a nation has spoken from beyond the next leap year & he should get to enact his bullshit now & anything less than the actual prime minister trotting out that guy’s line is another way they can write up kier as having failed his voters
…more & more it feels like the wrong people are embarrassed about the wrong parts of that…but…what do I know…I don’t even have a narrative…much less a gravy train…& my idea of a meal ticket is a luncheon voucher that hasn’t existed since probably the 80s & might as well be green shield stamps…so…maybe I’m the one who ought to be embarrassed…but…fuck it…here’s the thing…a bunch of people said that the protests yesterday should have taken a rain-check…basically the argument ran approximately thus…a synagogue was attacked on the holiest day of their religious calendar…part of why the response to that came down fast & lethal is that the police provide a higher degree of that sort of cover-just-in-case for those than…say…CoE services…with exceptions for things like the carol service in westminster cathedral or whatever…& obviously now there had been an attack those would need the reassurance of a higher rate of assigned officers…which the protesters could grant them by just admitting that their thing wouldn’t suffer from being dropped *right now* & giving it a week before raising whatever point it might have…& this is the part that I couldn’t believe I heard nobody come back on with any kind of “huh?”…out of respect for the jewish religious observance of a week of mourning
…people who feel they should protest the part where a seemingly non-violent group got labelled as it’s-an-offense-to-so-much-as-avow-this-organisation…should collectively agree to yanking that protest in a fashion with a timing that reinforces the spurious & a-logical parallel to conflate those protests & antisemitism…because they should perform a religious observance under the dictates of a faith that only a minority of those people personally profess
…& nobody says “everything about this is horrific & I, too, grieve for those hit the hardest by it but your faith is not my faith & I don’t think you’d appreciate it if I said maybe you should swap out your sabbath for tuesdays because the football happens on saturdays & we need the policemen to keep the tribes from turning on one another…kinda like when you guys were in the desert that time with that moses bloke, right?”…well…obviously nobody says *that*…because that’s clearly obnoxious…but…exaggerated for effect…it just about functions as a placeholder for the respectful version I don’t know that I could have summoned…which is why *I don’t try to be the voice on the fucking radio*
…sorry…I will try to come back through & bust this up with other people bitching about other stuff until it’s a bit less “so that one really bugged you this morning, huh?”…that one thing isn’t the most awful…or dreadful…or even the biggest wind-up…it…just felt like a good example of how you can say a thing *you* think is perfectly reasonable…& if nobody asks for the underlying reasoning…the people you’re talking to will respond to the tone & ignore that you just made kind of a massively-solipsistic array of assumptions that fit a thing which in less fraught contexts we absolutely call arrogance…*you* believe this stuff isn’t imaginary & should inform your life & your world…& your belief extends to not calling it belief…faith is belief that things you can’t prove are real…are really, real…super-real, even…so real they stay real after you pass beyond our shared reality…your faith supervenes upon your life & your world & how you see it…but…what about that makes it something other than arrogance to expect others to do as you do if *they* think…with a similar degree of faith…that that’s a comforting lie wedded to some historically useful mechanisms for social cohesion & the suppression of the worst instincts of the human animal & they’re happy for you that your thing takes the edge off for you but it doesn’t for them so the fact that you think that’s a fairer ask than “could you stop the wholesale murder & the war crimes & the occupying of land out-with your borders with the active support & facilitation of your state military & police forces – no, not you, personally…we weren’t talking to you…much less just because you ascribe to the same faith as the people we were talking to/about…answering for them on the basis you’re of their faith is what’s given you that impression which might be a genuine mistake but pretty frequently seems to be pretty intentional in, ironically, super-bad faith…what’s up with that, anyway?”
…damned if I know
…most likely damned either way, really…outside chance an enlightened deity with an intact sense of humor might give me a pass…but…I’ve read texts from…gotta be a dozen or so…&…mostly those seem like I get filed under damned on the soul listings…& they say they could save me…but…according to my personal faith if I agreed to their conditions I’d be damned…but that takes a long time to explain so mostly they just hear the “damned if I will” part…&…maybe that really is my bad?
…sorry, folks
ChatGPT is annoying enough, but a new level of annoying is people giving you “advice” by asking ChatGPT something and then pasting their comments to you
If i wanted to get statistically generated text i would do it myself, why do you think this is helping? 😭
…it…probably…would be more annoying if I’d done that?
…ah…fuck it…look…it’s a long one…longer than one of these kinda long…which when it’s verse sometimes people call “epic length”…but…tony harrison did the thing about the thing that’s doing my head in doing your head in decades ago…&…for my money…better…so…I’ve seen it without the quote but…the link that popped for me when I looked just now for one that would let you read it without me pasting the text into this page for what would seem like actually-forever at this point…keeps the quote…so here’s that part
‘My father still reads the dictionary every day.
He says your life depends on your power to master words.’Arthur Scargill
Sunday Times, 10 January 1982
…the poem…is called v.
…he wrote it after that edition of the times & it came out in the mid-eighties…caused a bit of a ruckus on account of the use of your bluntest anglo-saxon…about along the lines I expect you expect that would have played…but…you can look it up if you like
…not for nothing…but…back then…the proscribed organisation of the day was the national front
…only kidding…in the 70s that was the party in 4th place…maggie absorbing the bovver boys was the hole in their bucket…but…if wikipedia is to be believed…you could still vote for a national front candidate in 2015…according to wikipedia they’ve put up candidates a little over 500 times…with a smidge over 300 of those in ’79…&…in 100% of instances…lost their deposit
…you have to pay an ante to stand…if more than a certain percentage of voters agree that was worth doing you get it back…if few enough vote your way to brand you a bullshit un-serious candidate…you lose your deposit
…they never failed to lose their deposit…but…theirs is the underlying reasoning of farage’s position in the political landscape
…&…I don’t know that I know a more eloquent explanation of why that’s so in “the mother of parliaments” than tony’s “v.”?
I hate that the UK now (as of 2009) has a “Supreme Court”.It used to be called the Appellate Division of the House of Lords, comprised of the Law Lords. Very reassuring. Oh well. One of he worst things Tony Blair, Emperor Trump’s ProConsul at Gaza, did during his wretched reign was to eviscerate Lords in 1999 and wipeout lots of hereditary peerages.
Supposedly this was meant to diversity the membership as the life peers died off, but there’s no fixed number of seats. To the point where there are a fixed number in the Commons, 650, which feature contested elections, and 824 in the House of Lords (of which 92 survive as hereditary peerages.)
So how do you become a life peer? Well, you show up with a trainer bag stuffed with unmarked bills and leave it with some powerful government figure. You can also leave it with a Royal. Not Andrew, he has no clout, but KCIII when he was the Prince of Wales used to get very large and mysterious donations to the Prince of Wales Trust and various Highgrove improvement schemes. I bet they weren’t forgotten when the Honours Lists were announced.
…heard someone on the radio the other day who I think has a seat in the thing describe the lords as being the kind of second chamber “you would probably never design that way – but it’s got a long record of doing a rather good job”…not verbatim but that was the gist of the thing…& while the revisions process doesn’t quite give it the ability to prevent a government with a significant majority from getting its way…having to try repeatedly to persuade a bunch of people that include almost always some that have spent most of their lives learning about whatever the thing at issue is…& there are “crossbenchers” that have no party fealty…can eat the space you have in a legislative timetable…so…not very woke to suggest that in a few senses the old version with inherited seats granted for broadly fuedal reasons that no government of any day could fire or displace might have given those people that power long enough ago that their unfounded personal invulnerability for political purposes might have migrated from bug to feature
…but now we can see who the last few iterations tried to pump into the mix in their place
…the not-woke observation might do a good impression of being on the money…if that isn’t too on the nose a way to say it?
First of all, I seem to have become a High Tory but not Reform!) and the people of the UK are lucky that I don’t have the franchise over there. But second of all I think I would prefer a peer who has sat in the Lords for centuries over some slippery operator who “showed their generous support” by donating lavishly to the Conservative or Labour Party Executive Committees. They are like the compromised dingleberries that cling so tenaciously to our Great and Glorious President.
Didn’t work out for Lord Black of Foul Harbor, who cried when my nation told him to fuck off with his Peerage and he decided to leave Canada for the UK.
That was a happy day. It was also an even happier day when he got jailed in Murrica for being convicted of financial fraud and stealing workers pensions (his MO her in Canada.)
Spent most of yesterday sleeping off the remains of a cold and a long busy week.
https://theonion.com/stress-free-eric-adams-spends-day-bribing-pigeons-in-central-park/
Althoughthey hae it backwards. The pigeouns would be bribing Clownshoe.
Shoot, no edit feature? That little squib is barely coherent.
Did I ever mention my sole ride in a Tesla? My boss called an Uber and a Tesla showed up. I spent the entire ride trying to remember what you have to do to open the door if the car loses power and nearly gave myself a claustrophobia panic attack. You have to pry a panel off the door or something like that and find a cable to yank on. If I’m calling the Uber I’ll refuse a Tesla.
Lawsuit Blames Cybertruck’s Door Handle Design After a Fatal Crash
I had a similar feeling in a Ford eMach fake Mustang that’s actual an SUV thing.
Also an Uber. Smooth drive, but also definitely felt trapped.
My LEAF has a manual backup.
100% wouldn’t worry about it with a real car company like Nissan since they have protocols for how shit is done, which includes logic like “doors should be able to open if the car has no power.”
With the eMach, there as no door handle I could find on the outside and that’s what creeped my out.
Let’s hope your Uber driver wasn’t this guy.
…uh…among the legions of stuff I sort of meant to try to give a look in instead of just banging on about reductive oppositional triangulation being subjectively mistaken for a call & response routine whereby the speaker is awarded license to say that their feelings about x should determine the reality of what y can be without recourse to any further input because in fact that would prima facie be morally outrageous to demand of them…under the circumstances…in an argument more circular than descartes finding god in the I that thought itself into being…& questioning everything but the self-evident reality of the thing that could imagine well enough to call god…which definitely had bugger all to do with the ability of the same church that DGAF galileo was right that it fucking moved could royally fuck with a frenchman’s ability to get a print & distribution deal for a book about an approach to reason that would find that construction almost performatively to take the absolute piss
…the french, ladies & gents…truly a marvel in so many ways…but…I’m drifting off down parallel tangents…which…aren’t possible under most schools of geometry on account of the definitions in the dimensions those generally operate with…so…probably not a good idea on a sunday…someone’ll wind up putting their back out & it’ll be weeks before you stop feeling that…so…enough about the french…who…by the by…are no slouch on the this-is-how-you-do-a-protest front…that bollocks with he’s-not-a-real-tommy-&-I’m-halfway-convinced-he-picked-robinson-because-their-jams-used-to-have-a-golliwog-logo getting to talk to the south african nominally richer than croesus about how vitally important to the continued existence of the united kingdom they agree it is to instigate divisive violence along white supremacist explicitly pro-nazi lines…wasn’t on the day…but…I really did expect to find a spot somewhere in there to mention a different anniversary that was observed recently…& to…uhhh…observe…that neither yaxley-sax-lennon nor whats-mars-is-mine-like-the-fucking-mekon[…technically I think the mekon was venusian so maybe that ought to be ming the merciless…but…flash gordon was american & dan dare was a brit…which seemed more thematically appropriate…so]…would have lasted long that day on cable street when they would have had their blackshirts on?
…sigh
…lot of places I’ve seen variations on a shorter version that have him saying the various forces of law enforcement were all about making sure everyone was safe to protest at that spot where they like throwing the fairly diminutive young lady who somehow is threateningly dating the guy from the onion while running for office to the street every so often…& that…did not play well…in places where gavin’s toothsome newsome grin plays just fine
…& he’d been doing so well looking like he played a straight bat…as the cricket idiom would have it
…given the alternatives…I’d hope that’s more a stumble than a trip’n’fall’n’don’t-get-up…but…what tripped him up & how ain’t filling me with whatever the joys of spring go by in the fall?
…also…sorry, whatnow?
https://bsky.app/profile/sethcotlar.bsky.social/post/3m2hj5oqj7s2c
[ETA…it’s a thread but since it doesn’t embed here’s a bit from the top?]
…& if you scroll a bit there are a smattering of other sources in a similar vein from on-the-ground type places…& somewhere among it all is this bit
…&…about the roof-selfie part
…so…maybe we…misinterpreted the one about the *revolution* not being televised?