A positive signal for the gilt market: the UK government just tapped (issued more of) an existing 2040 bond via syndication (placement through several banks), seeking £8.5bn and receiving bids of £119bn, a new record high. Clearly there is plenty of market demand, albeit at elevated yields.
I wish I understood this process more. If there is so much bigly demand why can't the price be higher and therefore lower yield???
Because yield is being driven 90% by interest rate expectations. So there may be plenty of demand for government bonds but it'll be at coupon rates that reflect current yield expectations. If they were trying to issue bonds at mid 2010s coupons they wouldn't get any buyers.
But why can't it be done by reverse auction to make sure the sale always succeeds but is never oversubscribed - and thus the lowest possible yield for the government?
A positive signal for the gilt market: the UK government just tapped (issued more of) an existing 2040 bond via syndication (placement through several banks), seeking £8.5bn and receiving bids of £119bn, a new record high. Clearly there is plenty of market demand, albeit at elevated yields.
I had a lengthy chat with my son last night about bond prices, yields, and interest rates. He's doing A level economics and had got very confused about the whole thing. I realised it's quite hard to explain. Then I decided to use the analogy of house prices and rental yields, and somehow that is way easier to articulate even though the underlying maths is the same.
The formula for the income yield (coupon/price) is the same as for rental yields, but for bonds one would normally look at the yield to maturity, which captures both the coupon and the expected capital gain as the coupon redeems at its par value. That's a more complicated calculation, in which the price plays a more prominent role. Good luck with your econ 101 discussions with your son. My son is doing GCSE economics this year, he seems to be really enjoying it.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
A huge amount of work has been done on 3 and 4.
But it's far easier for opponents of doing anything to concentrate on 1 and 2. Oil companies, for example, spent a LOT of money and effort on that, over many decades.
Of course time was wasted, but that wasn't by accident.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
It seems to me that the strong probability is that, assuming (2) is a yes, (3) nonetheless is No. In practice the stuff of stopping it won't happen, and Trumpism places a final nail in that coffin.
The upside of climate change being rather better than expected, or the science being wrong are the best chances. Next best (unlikely) chance is scaling up decarbonisation globally. What is not going to happen is us stopping emitting CO2.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
Nobody should be building coal fired power stations, but you're implying that China is doing nothing on Climate Change. Apart from making solar and electric car technology affordable they have also moved to 29% renewables electricity production in 2023. Let's move from whataboutism and accept the facts but move faster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China. If we don't it will be more painful and more expensive in the future.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
I’m two episodes in and it’s fun. Why on earth did they not renew it?! Booo
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
So did American God.
If I remember correctly, Cryptonomicon discussed it the other way - concepts became Gods imbued with personalities that reflected the culture that created them. The Athena-Loki link was especially picked out.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
I’m two episodes in and it’s fun. Why on earth did they not renew it?! Booo
Think I might turn this riff into a gazette piece
I believe Hugh Grant was originally slated to play Zeus.
It was good - but like several extremely expensive, and high quality dramas on Apple, just didn't find a large enough audience.
REFORM SHOULD WALK IT. The only elephant in the room is the Lib Dems. They have been polling where well in Labour northern areas recently, coming up from third fourth even no show for the last 20 years. Accept that his is more west of Pennines than east. If they decide to go hell for leather, you know local candidate, the daily leaflet, mass canvassing etc, they may throw the whole thing into the melting pot, there could then be a three way contest.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
That's nonsense. It's not a binary, so question (3) is poorly worded. It's not about stopping climate change versus not stopping it. It's about how much climate change occurs, less or more.
We can do a wide variety of different things to reduce climate change. We have done and are doing many of those. We consider the costs of those actions and some things aren't done or are pushed back because of their costs.
Your claim that (4) is "rarely considered" would be the most bonkers thing said on today's discussion if it wasn't for Leon. (4) is considered all the time.
That last line might be the funniest thing I read all day, but I'm sure Trump will wake up at some point.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
So did American God.
If I remember correctly, Cryptonomicon discussed it the other way - concepts became Gods imbued with personalities that reflected the culture that created them. The Athena-Loki link was especially picked out.
What is the link between Athena and Loki? AFAIUI, Athena was the goddess of wisdom, whereas Loki was a massive pain in the arse from a previous bunch of gods who was unfortunately too charming to get rid of. (I know slightly more about the old northern gods than the Greek gods.)
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
And yet with all that, we've still reached 1.5.
So the argument is that we then do nothing?
How about 'We don't catch all the criminals so let's get rid of all the police'
No. the argument is we don't wreck ourselves in pursuit of the impossible but we adapt instead.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
Work out what? That the tech titans are Greek deities? Because if this is a common meme, I’ve never seen you mention it
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
So where does that leave Trump: the human who would have deities worship him?
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
And yet with all that, we've still reached 1.5.
So the argument is that we then do nothing?
How about 'We don't catch all the criminals so let's get rid of all the police'
No. the argument is we don't wreck ourselves in pursuit of the impossible but we adapt instead.
It's a false choice. You mitigate as far and as fast as you can do without causing more societal damage than you prevent, and at the same time you ensure adaptation measures are in place.
Adaptation on a global scale should of course mean allowing for mass population movements from the worst affected areas to those that are more resilient, but it doesn't seem like populations in the latter are likely to be too keen on this. Another reason why as much mitigation as is feasible makes sense.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
It seems to me that the strong probability is that, assuming (2) is a yes, (3) nonetheless is No. In practice the stuff of stopping it won't happen, and Trumpism places a final nail in that coffin.
The upside of climate change being rather better than expected, or the science being wrong are the best chances. Next best (unlikely) chance is scaling up decarbonisation globally. What is not going to happen is us stopping emitting CO2.
I'm hoping you're being a bit too pessimistic, like they were in 1900 about the great manure catastrophe. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I0LU5yq4xvg Renewables and batteries are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels to produce power and electric cars, which are already better, more efficient and cheaper to run will soon be cheaper to buy. Trump is a blip in the wrong direction but many companies in the US will continue to move in the right direction.
REFORM SHOULD WALK IT. The only elephant in the room is the Lib Dems. They have been polling where well in Labour northern areas recently, coming up from third fourth even no show for the last 20 years. Accept that his is more west of Pennines than east. If they decide to go hell for leather, you know local candidate, the daily leaflet, mass canvassing etc, they may throw the whole thing into the melting pot, there could then be a three way contest.
If these prices remain as and when a BE is called, I'm backing Lab. If the BE was tomorrow, I'd reckon 78% chance Lab win, 21% chance Reform, 1% Con.
Troubles come not as single spies but in whole battalions:
This Guido interview shows Tulip Siddiq story isn't going away - potentially one of biggest scandals of modern UK politics. Starmer needs to get a grip. How much was corrupt & murderous Awami League, former Bangladesh ruling party led by Siddiq's aunt, in bed with UK Labour?
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
So did American God.
If I remember correctly, Cryptonomicon discussed it the other way - concepts became Gods imbued with personalities that reflected the culture that created them. The Athena-Loki link was especially picked out.
What is the link between Athena and Loki? AFAIUI, Athena was the goddess of wisdom, whereas Loki was a massive pain in the arse from a previous bunch of gods who was unfortunately too charming to get rid of. (I know slightly more about the old northern gods than the Greek gods.)
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
It seems to me that the strong probability is that, assuming (2) is a yes, (3) nonetheless is No. In practice the stuff of stopping it won't happen, and Trumpism places a final nail in that coffin.
The upside of climate change being rather better than expected, or the science being wrong are the best chances. Next best (unlikely) chance is scaling up decarbonisation globally. What is not going to happen is us stopping emitting CO2.
I suspect you're right, and that's why stopping climate change shouldn't be the sine qua non of government policy.
Switching from fossil fuels to renewables, for example, is desirable in itself because of supply and costs reasons. But if the only reason to do something is to stop/limit climate change and the other impacts are all costs on ordinary people, then it should have no place in our politics.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
And yet with all that, we've still reached 1.5.
So the argument is that we then do nothing?
How about 'We don't catch all the criminals so let's get rid of all the police'
No. the argument is we don't wreck ourselves in pursuit of the impossible but we adapt instead.
It's a false choice. You mitigate as far and as fast as you can do without causing more societal damage than you prevent, and at the same time you ensure adaptation measures are in place.
Adaptation on a global scale should of course mean allowing for mass population movements from the worst affected areas to those that are more resilient, but it doesn't seem like populations in the latter are likely to be too keen on this. Another reason why as much mitigation as is feasible makes sense.
Yeah but we have been causing more societal damage than we prevent, that's my point.
Steve Jobs was definitely a god. Yet a god that died
Chronos?
Or Pan who was said to have died during the reign of Tiberius. GK Chesterton thought that theology was created to replace mythology otherwise man would die of despair. Maybe now theology is dying in the West mythology is starting a comeback?
Her aunt's regime 'disappeared' people - so why did Starmer make her a minister?
Wow! Uncharacteristically disobliging of the BBC!
The episode raises troubling questions about Starmer's judgement and Labour's approach to courting the votes of people of Bangladeshi heritage.
Questions are now swirling over why Labour failed to see this coming, given the party has long known about Siddiq's links to her scandal-hit aunt. It was 2016 when Bin Quasem's case was first raised with her. He and others among Bangladesh's "disappeared" have represented an awkward tension with Siddiq's publicly voiced views on human rights in the years since.
The Fukkers will have to avoid their habitual foible of selecting some crackpot c-nt who has banged on about 15 Minute Cities or Merkel being Hitler's daughter on FB in 2019. Otherwise they should win it because there are enough people who in Runcorn and Helsby who look this:
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Perhaps. Though my expectation is that the likes of the NHS will just dig their heels in even more on this.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
I’m two episodes in and it’s fun. Why on earth did they not renew it?! Booo
Think I might turn this riff into a gazette piece
I believe Hugh Grant was originally slated to play Zeus.
It was good - but like several extremely expensive, and high quality dramas on Apple, just didn't find a large enough audience.
Meanwhile Netflix churns out much slop.
Zeus was also a terrible WWF wrestler who feuded (jobbed) with Hogan. Tommy Lister Jr his real name. Also turned up in WCW as Ze Gangsta. Looked the part but was shit.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
There's a meme going round Facebook of a sign in what appears to be an English hospital saying that everyone going for X Ray will be asked if there is a possibility they are pregnant, regardless of gender.
Steve Jobs was definitely a god. Yet a god that died
Chronos?
Or Pan who was said to have died during the reign of Tiberius. GK Chesterton thought that theology was created to replace mythology otherwise man would die of despair. Maybe now theology is dying in the West mythology is starting a comeback?
Rather, it's a way for those with a liberal arts education to grapple with a world they no longer understand.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
So where does that leave Trump: the human who would have deities worship him?
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
REFORM SHOULD WALK IT. The only elephant in the room is the Lib Dems. They have been polling where well in Labour northern areas recently, coming up from third fourth even no show for the last 20 years. Accept that his is more west of Pennines than east. If they decide to go hell for leather, you know local candidate, the daily leaflet, mass canvassing etc, they may throw the whole thing into the melting pot, there could then be a three way contest.
If these prices remain as and when a BE is called, I'm backing Lab. If the BE was tomorrow, I'd reckon 78% chance Lab win, 21% chance Reform, 1% Con.
Tbh, the way by election markets go, I'd expect to get better odds on Labour than this. Not that 11/10 doesn't feel like a bit of value, but even better value might be available down the line.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A good part of that 20 years was also wasted on arguing with those who denied absolutely that there was such a thing as climate change. I accept that most have now accepted its existence though you still get an occasional Hiroo Onoda holding out..
About 30 years ago I thought of it as a four question process:
(1) Is the climate changing? (2) If so, is it caused by human activity? (3) If so, can we stop it? (4) If so, do the costs of stopping it outweigh the benefits?
And you're quite right that too much time was wasted on questions 1 and 2 and not enough on questions 3 and 4. Even today, 3 is still pretty much just assumed without thought to be yes, and 4 is rarely considered.
It seems to me that the strong probability is that, assuming (2) is a yes, (3) nonetheless is No. In practice the stuff of stopping it won't happen, and Trumpism places a final nail in that coffin.
The upside of climate change being rather better than expected, or the science being wrong are the best chances. Next best (unlikely) chance is scaling up decarbonisation globally. What is not going to happen is us stopping emitting CO2.
I suspect you're right, and that's why stopping climate change shouldn't be the sine qua non of government policy.
Switching from fossil fuels to renewables, for example, is desirable in itself because of supply and costs reasons. But if the only reason to do something is to stop/limit climate change and the other impacts are all costs on ordinary people, then it should have no place in our politics.
The only way that makes sense is if you think climate change will have no effect on ordinary people, which is obviouly incorrect.
Steve Jobs was definitely a god. Yet a god that died
Chronos?
Or Pan who was said to have died during the reign of Tiberius. GK Chesterton thought that theology was created to replace mythology otherwise man would die of despair. Maybe now theology is dying in the West mythology is starting a comeback?
I do believe we hardwired for faith, and it is possible we are hardwired for polytheism rather than monotheism, which is why all the monotheistic religions invent lots of quasi deities to satisfy this hunger, in Christianity you get The Holy Mother Mary (AKA Isis mother of Horus), plus archangels and saints &c, while Muslims deify real people, but also have angels and djinns
Thus the Tech Titans - titans! - neatly fulfill this role in our minds, with someone like Musk actually invoking dread, fear and horror in particularly credulous, timid, hairy, dim-wittted peasant-type people - not just @JosiasJessop but others as well
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
It's because of Greta types that we've made any progress at all. If we'd sat back and listened to the deniers and now the defeatists we'd be pumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than we are now.
Every gram counts, particularly when you take into account tipping points. 1.5C is better than 2.5C. But 2.5c is much better than 3.5c.
Bollocks. We were making progress well before crank Greta and her XR/JSO fringe nutcases came along.
They way these people go on is, as Sandpit says, as if we have done nothing when we have done plenty and continue to do so.
The fact we're still having a debate about whether it's even worth doing any mitigation at all suggests we still need people to campaign on these issues.
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
It's because of Greta types that we've made any progress at all. If we'd sat back and listened to the deniers and now the defeatists we'd be pumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than we are now.
Every gram counts, particularly when you take into account tipping points. 1.5C is better than 2.5C. But 2.5c is much better than 3.5c.
Bollocks. We were making progress well before crank Greta and her XR/JSO fringe nutcases came along.
They way these people go on is, as Sandpit says, as if we have done nothing when we have done plenty and continue to do so.
The fact we're still having a debate about whether it's even worth doing any mitigation at all suggests we still need people to campaign on these issues.
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
The solution, then, is to sell the other benefits of the changes you want to make.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
This is the greatest example of why Oxford commas matter.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Eh? You can group it as:
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
This is the greatest example of why Oxford commas matter.
I love these.
However in fairness to @Driver the sentence was confusing because the addition of the word women was logically unnecessary and therefore causes confusion and the benefit of an Oxford comma is only useful when added. If not needed as here it can be confusing as to whether it is not needed (as in the example Driver quoted) or the person writing it doesn't realise it is needed. if that makes sense.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
It's because of Greta types that we've made any progress at all. If we'd sat back and listened to the deniers and now the defeatists we'd be pumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than we are now.
Every gram counts, particularly when you take into account tipping points. 1.5C is better than 2.5C. But 2.5c is much better than 3.5c.
Bollocks. We were making progress well before crank Greta and her XR/JSO fringe nutcases came along.
They way these people go on is, as Sandpit says, as if we have done nothing when we have done plenty and continue to do so.
The fact we're still having a debate about whether it's even worth doing any mitigation at all suggests we still need people to campaign on these issues.
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
The solution, then, is to sell the other benefits of the changes you want to make.
The solution is indeed to challenge the falsehoods that are treated like gospel by the sceptic community, including that doing nothing is cost-free, that increasing clean power generation somehow reduces power output, and that there's a choice between economic growth and decarbonisation.
Emissions are pollution and their reduction is a matter of industrial waste disposal. Sometimes we all overcomplicate things. Eco campaigners try to make it a moral crusade, and business as usual fans continue to muddy the waters on cause and effect.
The Fukkers will have to avoid their habitual foible of selecting some crackpot c-nt who has banged on about 15 Minute Cities or Merkel being Hitler's daughter on FB in 2019. Otherwise they should win it because there are enough people who in Runcorn and Helsby who look this:
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
This is the greatest example of why Oxford commas matter.
I love these.
However in fairness to @Driver the sentence was confusing because the addition of the word women was logically unnecessary and therefore causes confusion and the benefit of an Oxford comma is only useful when added. If not needed as here it can be confusing as to whether it is not needed (as in the example Driver quoted) or the person writing it doesn't realise it is needed. if that makes sense.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
So where does that leave Trump: the human who would have deities worship him?
Prometheus, clearly
Where does Tim Berners-Lee fit into this?
ooh good call. Hercules? Or maybe he is Prometheus and Trump is Jesus
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
I must have been absent during all your conversations when you discussed how the tech titans are like Greek Gods, and can be individually identified as such
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
Ahem. "Women (and people with a cervix)" is not necessarily logically equivalent to "(Women and people) with a cervix". This is why the Oxford comma is so useful.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
Steve Jobs was definitely a god. Yet a god that died
Chronos?
Or Pan who was said to have died during the reign of Tiberius. GK Chesterton thought that theology was created to replace mythology otherwise man would die of despair. Maybe now theology is dying in the West mythology is starting a comeback?
I do believe we hardwired for faith, and it is possible we are hardwired for polytheism rather than monotheism, which is why all the monotheistic religions invent lots of quasi deities to satisfy this hunger, in Christianity you get The Holy Mother Mary (AKA Isis mother of Horus), plus archangels and saints &c, while Muslims deify real people, but also have angels and djinns
Thus the Tech Titans - titans! - neatly fulfill this role in our minds, with someone like Musk actually invoking dread, fear and horror in particularly credulous, timid, hairy, dim-wittted peasant-type people - not just @JosiasJessop but others as well
If we are doing this ridiculous cod-psychology; I might wonder why you have such a fondness for 'great men' who just so happen to be shits, charlatans and/or downright bad people, and why you believe any crazy stuff you read on t'Internet.
Leaving that to one side, your central thesis is wrong. I was a great fan of Musk on here before around 2015/6, as you could probably find from comments. I'm somewhat fond of Bezos, and admire some of the stuff Gates has done with his foundation.
But unlike you, I can change my mind as evidence comes in. And the evidence that Musk is not just a bad man, but an absolutely malicious entity, becomes stronger day-by-day.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
There's an old rule in editing that says "replace all the adjectives with "very". Then remove all the "verys"". The two paragraphs would have said the same thing had all/most of the adjectives been removed.
Pause
As would the phrase "forensic and crystalline precision", come to think of it...
This is where a decade or so of Tory procurement policy left us. A choice between buying an obsolescent airframe, and shuttering our domestic manufacturing.
Also, they did a shit deal on the F35 contract if that's all the manufacturing we got out of it. And our "special relationship" doesn't even give us access to the new radar the US are planning to buy for their crates.
Union calls on UK government to choose new Typhoons https://www.aero-mag.com/union-calls-on-uk-government-to-choose-new-typhoons Unite understands a decision is imminent from government on the purchasing of new aircraft for the RAF with a choice between the British-manufactured and assembled Typhoon and the American F-35(A).
It says the government should invest in a new tranche of Typhoon fighter jets to ensure the UK maintains its industrial skills base ready for the 6th generation Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), also referred to as Tempest.
The call also comes shortly after a report last week from the defence select committee that highlighted the importance of Britain's industrial capability and skills base for Tempest/GCAP to be a success.
With full-scale production of Tempest not expected to begin until the 2030s, retaining final assembly capability and the existing Typhoon BAE Systems workforce of 6,500 will be a significant challenge and will be made more difficult (impossible ?) by the dwindling of the UK Typhoon production line...
...According to the union, a UK order of 24 F35's would only secure 2-3 months of work in Britain for 2,000 people whereas 24 Typhoons would secure 26,000 jobs for 2 years for workers in BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo and the UK supply chain.
Unite defence and aerospace national officer Rhys McCarthy said: "In an increasingly unstable world it would be reckless not to ensure that our own domestic defence industry is properly supported and capable of meeting the security challenges we face...
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Eh? You can group it as:
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
See my reply to @TheScreamingEagles where I acknowledge to you that it was a very poor sentence. But it was logically correct.
Try saying the sentence twice and each time pause just once but at two different points. Pause after women the first time and then after people the second time.
If you put an Oxford comma after women it reads like you think it reads, but it hasn't got one. Without an Oxford comma, but read by someone who would expect an Oxford comma if it were necessary (so as presented) it is logical.
However it is very confusing. Presumably they want to be politically correct so have added 'people with a cervix' to 'women with a cervix' and created the confusion. If they want to be politically correct it would have been easier to just take out 'women and'.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
please show me where you had the idea, is all I humbly ask
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Eh? You can group it as:
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
No it implies that some people with a cervix might not identify as women. But you knew that.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
William Gibson framed it well with Joseph Virek
So, not you @Malmesbury and not @Nigelb - you didn’t have the idea and you didn’t discuss it on here
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
It's because of Greta types that we've made any progress at all. If we'd sat back and listened to the deniers and now the defeatists we'd be pumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than we are now.
Every gram counts, particularly when you take into account tipping points. 1.5C is better than 2.5C. But 2.5c is much better than 3.5c.
Bollocks. We were making progress well before crank Greta and her XR/JSO fringe nutcases came along.
They way these people go on is, as Sandpit says, as if we have done nothing when we have done plenty and continue to do so.
The fact we're still having a debate about whether it's even worth doing any mitigation at all suggests we still need people to campaign on these issues.
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
The solution, then, is to sell the other benefits of the changes you want to make.
Why? The benefits, or at least the costs of not doing something, are understood by almost everyone.
The question is how you fund it. As I've said before, I think that should be out of general taxation because many of the other benefits associated with climate policy accrue to the richest households - EVs, solar panels, heat pumps and so on. That's already largely the case, but things like 3% higher energy bills from CfD should really be absorbed by taxes, and the standing charge abolished as it hurts low-use households the most.
I would also focus on climate policies that are more likely to be utilised by poorer households - electric buses, cycling infrastructure, as well as abolishing VAT on repairs and parts for 10+year old ICEs while to plug the gap to EVs.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
This is the greatest example of why Oxford commas matter.
I love these.
However in fairness to @Driver the sentence was confusing because the addition of the word women was logically unnecessary and therefore causes confusion and the benefit of an Oxford comma is only useful when added. If not needed as here it can be confusing as to whether it is not needed (as in the example Driver quoted) or the person writing it doesn't realise it is needed. if that makes sense.
I love cooking my family and pets.
Don’t be a psychopath, use commas.
More, more. I can never remember them. I vaguely remember a book dedication implying someone whom it was dedicated to was god and also one involving jack and a horse (you can probably get the drift of that one). Can people remember them?
This is where a decade or so of Tory procurement policy left us. A choice between buying an obsolescent airframe, and shuttering our domestic manufacturing.
Also, they did a shit deal on the F35 contract if that's all the manufacturing we got out of it. And our "special relationship" doesn't even give us access to the new radar the US are planning to buy for their crates.
Union calls on UK government to choose new Typhoons https://www.aero-mag.com/union-calls-on-uk-government-to-choose-new-typhoons Unite understands a decision is imminent from government on the purchasing of new aircraft for the RAF with a choice between the British-manufactured and assembled Typhoon and the American F-35(A).
It says the government should invest in a new tranche of Typhoon fighter jets to ensure the UK maintains its industrial skills base ready for the 6th generation Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), also referred to as Tempest.
The call also comes shortly after a report last week from the defence select committee that highlighted the importance of Britain's industrial capability and skills base for Tempest/GCAP to be a success.
With full-scale production of Tempest not expected to begin until the 2030s, retaining final assembly capability and the existing Typhoon BAE Systems workforce of 6,500 will be a significant challenge and will be made more difficult (impossible ?) by the dwindling of the UK Typhoon production line...
...According to the union, a UK order of 24 F35's would only secure 2-3 months of work in Britain for 2,000 people whereas 24 Typhoons would secure 26,000 jobs for 2 years for workers in BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo and the UK supply chain.
Unite defence and aerospace national officer Rhys McCarthy said: "In an increasingly unstable world it would be reckless not to ensure that our own domestic defence industry is properly supported and capable of meeting the security challenges we face...
In terms of workshare, we have a good chunk of F35. F35C that is.
Part of the RAF is fighting a rear guard action to turn part of the F35 order into F35A. In their view, too many carrier capable F35 risks the FAA getting too powerful.
F35 is considerably more advanced than Typhoon.
To add to the mix, there is also the possibility of getting rid of the earliest tranche of Typhoons, which have limited capabilities.
Steve Jobs was definitely a god. Yet a god that died
Chronos?
Or Pan who was said to have died during the reign of Tiberius. GK Chesterton thought that theology was created to replace mythology otherwise man would die of despair. Maybe now theology is dying in the West mythology is starting a comeback?
I do believe we hardwired for faith, and it is possible we are hardwired for polytheism rather than monotheism, which is why all the monotheistic religions invent lots of quasi deities to satisfy this hunger, in Christianity you get The Holy Mother Mary (AKA Isis mother of Horus), plus archangels and saints &c, while Muslims deify real people, but also have angels and djinns
Thus the Tech Titans - titans! - neatly fulfill this role in our minds, with someone like Musk actually invoking dread, fear and horror in particularly credulous, timid, hairy, dim-wittted peasant-type people - not just @JosiasJessop but others as well
I think Musk and co are more like Terry Pratchett's small gods. Their power and existence is dependent on people believing in them.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
William Gibson framed it well with Joseph Virek
So, not you @Malmesbury and not @Nigelb - you didn’t have the idea and you didn’t discuss it on here
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
Gibson wasn’t the first either. In his case, Virek is trying to reaching out to an online collective of escaped AIs that have become incantations of Voodoo gods. He wants to become a eGod as well, living forever.
This is framed in the context of a society where levels of wealth create the impression of different species. Virek is described as being post human - already.
If you do define it as terrorism, then was the Dunblane Massacre terrorism? Hungerford? The Cumbria shootings?
What is the definition of these things that makes something 'terrorism' and an act that causes terror?
The actions of a lone wolf are not terrorism, however terrifying they may be. Terrorism requires a conspiracy of multiple actors using illegal and violent means in the pursuit of damaging the established political order, whether at home or abroad.
The Oklahoma City bombing was by two people (so not lone wolf...) but was definitely terrorism. The Unabomber was a lone wolf and a terrorist, so I'm unsure your definition fits.
Terrorism is political violence with the intent to cause terror. It requires a political motive, no matter how warped. That could be global jihad or a united Ireland or anti-wokeness.
Rudakabana is clearly a psycho and very similar in profile to the teen school shooters who plague the US. He does not seem to have a cause. Nobody calls those school shooters terrorists, largely because they are usually white.
"Terrorism" loses its meaning if it simply gets extended to include all acts of mass murder by brown or black people. A bit like the other over-used word of our era, genocide.
The thing is, he didn't attack his school. It's the fact he went for girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class that set the alarm bells ringing. So the starting point should have been "why isn't this motivated by hate for girls/women like Taylor Swift, etc.?" And the police should have been open about their thoughts on that. It wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to the trial.
I did point out at the time - and I was one of very few who did - that the decision to attack young girls was as relevant, possibly even more so, as what religion or not he had. In the general rush to make this case about race and/or religion the targets and what the attacker may have felt about the, was ignored, as it so often is. Even with ideological terrorists, there is often a background of domestic and/or misogynistic violence, which should be paid more attention to than it is.
As for Prevent training, having recently done mine, I suspect that the fact that he appeared to follow no particular ideology was the reason he was not accepted into the programme.
"Two shocking facts around knife crime" emerged during this case, Cooper says.
The home secretary says it emerged that Rudakubana admitted to carrying a knife "more than 10 times".
"Yet the action against him was far too weak. And despite the fact he'd been convicted for violence and was just 17, he was easily able to order a knife on Amazon.
"That's a total disgrace and it must change. So, we will bring in stronger measures to tackle knife sales online in the Crime and Policing Bill this spring."
Yeah, instead of increasing stop and search and the punishment for carrying knives, let's crack down on internet shopping.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
William Gibson framed it well with Joseph Virek
So, not you @Malmesbury and not @Nigelb - you didn’t have the idea and you didn’t discuss it on here
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
Gibson wasn’t the first either. In his case, Virek is trying to reaching out to an online collective of escaped AIs that have become incantations of Voodoo gods. He wants to become a eGod as well, living forever.
This is framed in the context of a society where levels of wealth create the impression of different species. Virek is described as being post human - already.
So we’ve established that the particular idea: that the Olympian cast of specific tech titans assembled at Trump’s inauguration - Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc - can be individually identified with certain Greek Gods and that they possibly fulfill the same role in our religion-hungry brains as polytheistic deities is, in fact, brand new and I just made it up. Despite what you and @Nigelb have been wanking on about
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
William Gibson framed it well with Joseph Virek
So, not you @Malmesbury and not @Nigelb - you didn’t have the idea and you didn’t discuss it on here
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
Gibson wasn’t the first either. In his case, Virek is trying to reaching out to an online collective of escaped AIs that have become incantations of Voodoo gods. He wants to become a eGod as well, living forever.
This is framed in the context of a society where levels of wealth create the impression of different species. Virek is described as being post human - already.
(narrator: see "Count Zero" by William Gibson, 1986, second in the Sprawl trilogy)
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
This is the greatest example of why Oxford commas matter.
If that were saying Nelson Mandela were a dildo collector it wouldn't have the "a"...
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
Ahem. "Women (and people with a cervix)" is not necessarily logically equivalent to "(Women and people) with a cervix". This is why the Oxford comma is so useful.
I'm not saying they're equivalent. I'm just asking for a reading of the sentence that is neither a tautology nor absurd.
Just realised that the Tech Titans have become weird mythic figures. They are the Greek deities of our time
You can actually name them
Zuckerberg with his new curls is obviously Apollo, ever youthful
Jeff Bezos, bald and smaller; is Hades
Musk is Zeus. Madly arrogant, capricious and wilful, but the most powerful of all
OK...
Think about it
They walk amongst us yet they have vast, inhuman powers. We both fear and worship them (however reluctantly). They have very human traits - jealousy, anger, lust, greed - yet operate in a different higher world. And they fly about in the air a lot
Somebody’s just watched Kaos.
The Boys is very much the same thing.
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
{a Golden Retriever puppy thinks…}
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
That's mean; it will make a cracking article. Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
William Gibson framed it well with Joseph Virek
So, not you @Malmesbury and not @Nigelb - you didn’t have the idea and you didn’t discuss it on here
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
I'd ordinarily take the line that Tulip Siddiq is not responsible for her aunt's misdeeds. But she has certainly not disassociated herself away from her aunt and her wider family.
She's gone further. She has publicly stated that all she knows about politics was learnt from her aunt and she had people from the Awami League campaigning for her as well as representing them in the U.K. and so on. She was willing to use her family connections when she thought it would help so she can hardly complain now that people are asking questions about precisely what these connections amounted to.
It raises two further questions:
1. What sort of due diligence was Labour doing on its candidates and those given Ministerial jobs because to my eyes it looks either non-existent or piss poor. 2. Starmer's judgment in making her a Minister, especially in the role she was given. How on earth did he think that appropriate? By all accounts their families are friendly and they have gone on holiday together. It is poor judgment on his part, especially for someone who's always boasting about being DPP.
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Eh? You can group it as:
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
See my reply to @TheScreamingEagles where I acknowledge to you that it was a very poor sentence. But it was logically correct.
Try saying the sentence twice and each time pause just once but at two different points. Pause after women the first time and then after people the second time.
If you put an Oxford comma after women it reads like you think it reads, but it hasn't got one. Without an Oxford comma, but read by someone who would expect an Oxford comma if it were necessary (so as presented) it is logical.
However it is very confusing. Presumably they want to be politically correct so have added 'people with a cervix' to 'women with a cervix' and created the confusion. If they want to be politically correct it would have been easier to just take out 'women and'.
How was it "logically correct"? What exactly are they trying to say that is neither a tautology nor absurd?
On crime: our local shop had a suspected shoplifter yesterday, who allegedly took £30 of stuff in a bag. Two police cars and a van were in the car park when I arrived a short while later. (I have no idea whether a member of staff or a member of the public apprehended her).
Whatever Trump’s buffoonery, who ever wrote this EO did so with forensic and crystalline precision:
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Well personally I agree with that. The madness is ending. And it would appear being replaced by an entirely different madness. Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
I think it may refocus the spotlight for example on NHS communication over “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes should get cancer screening.”
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
Probably none unless you can provide a citation for your quote. The NHS website says:
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
If that's not tautologous then it implies it's offered to women without a cervix.
You might not be a fan of the Oxford comma (@TheScreamingEagles might want a word), but that sentence does make sense. It only has the meaning you state if you put a comma after women, or you don't believe in the Oxford comma and enjoy confusion.
Eh? You can group it as:
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
No it implies that some people with a cervix might not identify as women. But you knew that.
"might not identify as" is, in a medical context, absurd.
And who would be the recipients of these reparations and manage them.
Organisations like Oxfam, of course. Organisations interested in managing problems, do they ever solve any ? If they did their raison d'etre disappears.
Britain should pay reparations to India, an Oxfam International report has suggested.
It argued that former colonial powers should pay reparations to former colonies to compensate for the transfer of wealth it claims took place under imperial rule.
It cited analysis that showed that between 1765 and 1900, Britain extracted $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) from India.
“The cost of reparations should be borne by the richest, who benefited the most from colonialism.”
It is the first time the charity has called for such a move.
The report proposed that Western countries commit to paying former colonies a minimum of $5 trillion (£4 trillion) annually in reparations and “climate debt” – the amount of money Western countries are said to owe poorer ones to account for the costs of climate change.
The current fad for this sort of thing is going to be quite short lived as in principle it is endless and in practice is impossible.
Two things really, and I hope you are right, firstly govts like ours have quite a few people whose backgrounds are in organisations like Oxfam and they will try to influence policy.
Secondly this is more bargaining, stating a position to try to lever something. Same with the so-called climate reparations. They demanded 1 Trillion a year off nations at the last COP and ended up with $325 Billion and moaned about that not being enough.
It is all one big grift.
I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are making progress, but too slowly and I doubt they'll keep going when the other big emitters do nothing. Without sufficient funding from richer countries, poorer countries won't industialise cleanly.
The best we can do as a nation is to start preparing for the gradual loss of our low-lying areas to the sea.
There never was the political will on a global scale. China may be coming on board now but has done a lot of damage in recent decades and you don't even mention India. We've wasted at least 20 years, probably more, in a futile quest to mitigate climate change when we should have been adapting to it.
A lot has been done to mitigate climate change in the last 20 years. Solar Wind Batteries Electric vehicles More efficient vehicles of all types House insulation
We've decoupled energy growth from GDP growth worldwide.
The worrying developments are the huge energy demands of AI and crypto.
Which is why there’s pushback against the Greta-types, who insist the West has done nothing and that the solution is communism and economic recession, but never seem to mention China and India still building more coal power stations.
It's because of Greta types that we've made any progress at all. If we'd sat back and listened to the deniers and now the defeatists we'd be pumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than we are now.
Every gram counts, particularly when you take into account tipping points. 1.5C is better than 2.5C. But 2.5c is much better than 3.5c.
Bollocks. We were making progress well before crank Greta and her XR/JSO fringe nutcases came along.
They way these people go on is, as Sandpit says, as if we have done nothing when we have done plenty and continue to do so.
The fact we're still having a debate about whether it's even worth doing any mitigation at all suggests we still need people to campaign on these issues.
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
The solution, then, is to sell the other benefits of the changes you want to make.
Why? The benefits, or at least the costs of not doing something, are understood by almost everyone.
The question is how you fund it. As I've said before, I think that should be out of general taxation because many of the other benefits associated with climate policy accrue to the richest households - EVs, solar panels, heat pumps and so on. That's already largely the case, but things like 3% higher energy bills from CfD should really be absorbed by taxes, and the standing charge abolished as it hurts low-use households the most.
I would also focus on climate policies that are more likely to be utilised by poorer households - electric buses, cycling infrastructure, as well as abolishing VAT on repairs and parts for 10+year old ICEs while to plug the gap to EVs.
Why? Because the government saying "we need to make your life worse to stop climate change" doesn't get popular support.
Comments
Hephaestus making iPhones at his forge
Sunder Pichai may not even be a god, maybe just one of those giants that gets killed like Polybotes
But it's far easier for opponents of doing anything to concentrate on 1 and 2. Oil companies, for example, spent a LOT of money and effort on that, over many decades.
Of course time was wasted, but that wasn't by accident.
Chronos?
Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
Also, did Leon really only just work this out ?
The upside of climate change being rather better than expected, or the science being wrong are the best chances. Next best (unlikely) chance is scaling up decarbonisation globally. What is not going to happen is us stopping emitting CO2.
Trump has come prepared this time. The Vibeshift is accelerating
Let's move from whataboutism and accept the facts but move faster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China.
If we don't it will be more painful and more expensive in the future.
Think I might turn this riff into a gazette piece
If I remember correctly, Cryptonomicon discussed it the other way - concepts became Gods imbued with personalities that reflected the culture that created them. The Athena-Loki link was especially picked out.
It was good - but like several extremely expensive, and high quality dramas on Apple, just didn't find a large enough audience.
Meanwhile Netflix churns out much slop.
This one's for you, twitching British feminists. The Americans will be saying SEX henceforth.
https://x.com/glennagoldis/status/1881530097230107095
“No gender please, we’re American”
Unfortunately I don't see that it's any use to those of us in Britain whi share this view.
Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 29% (-1)
CON: 25% (+2)
RFM: 22% (=)
LDM: 11% (-1)
GRN: 8% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via
@DeltapollUK
, 17-20 Jan.
Changes w/ 30 Dec - 3 Jan.
Her aunt's regime 'disappeared' people - so why did Starmer make her a minister?
Adaptation on a global scale should of course mean allowing for mass population movements from the worst affected areas to those that are more resilient, but it doesn't seem like populations in the latter are likely to be too keen on this. Another reason why as much mitigation as is feasible makes sense.
Renewables and batteries are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels to produce power and electric cars, which are already better, more efficient and cheaper to run will soon be cheaper to buy. Trump is a blip in the wrong direction but many companies in the US will continue to move in the right direction.
If the BE was tomorrow, I'd reckon 78% chance Lab win, 21% chance Reform, 1% Con.
This Guido interview shows Tulip Siddiq story isn't going away - potentially one of biggest scandals of modern UK politics. Starmer needs to get a grip. How much was corrupt & murderous Awami League, former Bangladesh ruling party led by Siddiq's aunt, in bed with UK Labour?
https://x.com/MichaelLCrick/status/1881627002601681342
"Now in many other mythologies you can find gods that have parallels with Athena. The Sumerians had Enki, the Norse had Loki. Loki was an inventor-god, but psychologically he had more in common with Ares; he was not only the god of technology but the god of evil too, the closest thing they had to the Devil. Native Americans had tricksters—creatures full of cunning—like Coyote and Raven in their mythologies, but they didn’t have technology yet, and so they hadn’t coupled the Trickster with Crafts to generate this hybrid Technologist-god."
It's been an awful long time since I last read Cryptonomicon though. TBH, it looks a bit ropier than I remember.
Switching from fossil fuels to renewables, for example, is desirable in itself because of supply and costs reasons. But if the only reason to do something is to stop/limit climate change and the other impacts are all costs on ordinary people, then it should have no place in our politics.
How many non-native English speaking women will end up getting cancer because they didn’t realise it referred to them?
How the phone colonised my life
I was once excited by portable telephones. Not any more"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-the-phone-colonised-my-life/
The episode raises troubling questions about Starmer's judgement and Labour's approach to courting the votes of people of Bangladeshi heritage.
Questions are now swirling over why Labour failed to see this coming, given the party has long known about Siddiq's links to her scandal-hit aunt. It was 2016 when Bin Quasem's case was first raised with her.
He and others among Bangladesh's "disappeared" have represented an awkward tension with Siddiq's publicly voiced views on human rights in the years since.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmy88e7jdlo
BBC News - Yes, Minister character is government's new AI assistant
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy48vl3p0nyo
It's offered to women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 64
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cervical-screening/
Thus the Tech Titans - titans! - neatly fulfill this role in our minds, with someone like Musk actually invoking dread, fear and horror in particularly credulous, timid, hairy, dim-wittted peasant-type people - not just @JosiasJessop but others as well
It's revisionism to suggest that there was a consensus on this in the past - environmental campaigners have been ridiculed for decades, and now those who previously opposed them so energetically smugly declare that their efforts weren't required at all.
This thinking means that people continue to oppose any attempt to deal with the problem, on the basis that things will just fix themselves automatically. The cycle continues.
https://news.sky.com/story/hotel-fire-at-popular-ski-resort-in-turkey-kills-at-least-66-people-13293518
And there has still been some other “inclusive” (sic) language floating about:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/04/nhs-watchdog-say-pregnant-people-gender-neutral-drive/
It begins
https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1881430710889922716
Just remember the North, Rachel, but good for her if shes doing this
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-s-reeves-to-tell-davos-time-to-invest-in-britain-is-now/ar-AA1xzmg3?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=4abb68822a054301ae123170f5b0decd&ei=10
It's offered to (women) and (people with a cervix) - which is either tautologous or implies some women don't have a cervix
It's offered to (women and people) with a cervix - which implies women aren't people
Unless I'm missing something - how do you group it to make it make sense?
The serial comma is irrelevant because there are only two items in the list.
However in fairness to @Driver the sentence was confusing because the addition of the word women was logically unnecessary and therefore causes confusion and the benefit of an Oxford comma is only useful when added. If not needed as here it can be confusing as to whether it is not needed (as in the example Driver quoted) or the person writing it doesn't realise it is needed. if that makes sense.
Well me about 100 other companies are invited to this breakfast.
Emissions are pollution and their reduction is a matter of industrial waste disposal. Sometimes we all overcomplicate things. Eco campaigners try to make it a moral crusade, and business as usual fans continue to muddy the waters on cause and effect.
Don’t be a psychopath, use commas.
This is awesome. The bestest thing in the universe. I! have! discovered! It!
I shall call it a…. tail!
Was it during one of my bans?
Abolish 50% of unis and the 50% target.
Anyone can have the idea; he'll get paid to write it up.
Leaving that to one side, your central thesis is wrong. I was a great fan of Musk on here before around 2015/6, as you could probably find from comments. I'm somewhat fond of Bezos, and admire some of the stuff Gates has done with his foundation.
But unlike you, I can change my mind as evidence comes in. And the evidence that Musk is not just a bad man, but an absolutely malicious entity, becomes stronger day-by-day.
Pause
As would the phrase "forensic and crystalline precision", come to think of it...
(ducks)
A choice between buying an obsolescent airframe, and shuttering our domestic manufacturing.
Also, they did a shit deal on the F35 contract if that's all the manufacturing we got out of it. And our "special relationship" doesn't even give us access to the new radar the US are planning to buy for their crates.
Union calls on UK government to choose new Typhoons
https://www.aero-mag.com/union-calls-on-uk-government-to-choose-new-typhoons
Unite understands a decision is imminent from government on the purchasing of new aircraft for the RAF with a choice between the British-manufactured and assembled Typhoon and the American F-35(A).
It says the government should invest in a new tranche of Typhoon fighter jets to ensure the UK maintains its industrial skills base ready for the 6th generation Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), also referred to as Tempest.
The call also comes shortly after a report last week from the defence select committee that highlighted the importance of Britain's industrial capability and skills base for Tempest/GCAP to be a success.
With full-scale production of Tempest not expected to begin until the 2030s, retaining final assembly capability and the existing Typhoon BAE Systems workforce of 6,500 will be a significant challenge and will be made more difficult (impossible ?) by the dwindling of the UK Typhoon production line...
...According to the union, a UK order of 24 F35's would only secure 2-3 months of work in Britain for 2,000 people whereas 24 Typhoons would secure 26,000 jobs for 2 years for workers in BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo and the UK supply chain.
Unite defence and aerospace national officer Rhys McCarthy said: "In an increasingly unstable world it would be reckless not to ensure that our own domestic defence industry is properly supported and capable of meeting the security challenges we face...
Try saying the sentence twice and each time pause just once but at two different points. Pause after women the first time and then after people the second time.
If you put an Oxford comma after women it reads like you think it reads, but it hasn't got one. Without an Oxford comma, but read by someone who would expect an Oxford comma if it were necessary (so as presented) it is logical.
However it is very confusing. Presumably they want to be politically correct so have added 'people with a cervix' to 'women with a cervix' and created the confusion. If they want to be politically correct it would have been easier to just take out 'women and'.
And someone else had a SIMILAR ish idea but not the same, just checking
The question is how you fund it. As I've said before, I think that should be out of general taxation because many of the other benefits associated with climate policy accrue to the richest households - EVs, solar panels, heat pumps and so on. That's already largely the case, but things like 3% higher energy bills from CfD should really be absorbed by taxes, and the standing charge abolished as it hurts low-use households the most.
I would also focus on climate policies that are more likely to be utilised by poorer households - electric buses, cycling infrastructure, as well as abolishing VAT on repairs and parts for 10+year old ICEs while to plug the gap to EVs.
Part of the RAF is fighting a rear guard action to turn part of the F35 order into F35A. In their view, too many carrier capable F35 risks the FAA getting too powerful.
F35 is considerably more advanced than Typhoon.
To add to the mix, there is also the possibility of getting rid of the earliest tranche of Typhoons, which have limited capabilities.
This is framed in the context of a society where levels of wealth create the impression of different species. Virek is described as being post human - already.
As for Prevent training, having recently done mine, I suspect that the fact that he appeared to follow no particular ideology was the reason he was not accepted into the programme.
"Two shocking facts around knife crime" emerged during this case, Cooper says.
The home secretary says it emerged that Rudakubana admitted to carrying a knife "more than 10 times".
"Yet the action against him was far too weak. And despite the fact he'd been convicted for violence and was just 17, he was easily able to order a knife on Amazon.
"That's a total disgrace and it must change. So, we will bring in stronger measures to tackle knife sales online in the Crime and Policing Bill this spring."
Yeah, instead of increasing stop and search and the punishment for carrying knives, let's crack down on internet shopping.
Cool cool
Some dweeb on Pinterest did, but so what ?
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/461056080620485025/
It raises two further questions:
1. What sort of due diligence was Labour doing on its candidates and those given Ministerial jobs because to my eyes it looks either non-existent or piss poor.
2. Starmer's judgment in making her a Minister, especially in the role she was given. How on earth did he think that appropriate? By all accounts their families are friendly and they have gone on holiday together. It is poor judgment on his part, especially for someone who's always boasting about being DPP.
How to grow the economy.
More Lawyers ?