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sebzilla posted:This is probably not a good thing for Labour's chances of winning a majority any time soon, right?
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Dec 14, 2020 21:50
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happyhippy posted:Infinitesimal.
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Dec 14, 2020 21:52
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sebzilla posted:This is probably not a good thing for Labour's chances of winning a majority any time soon, right?
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Dec 14, 2020 22:03
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Nutapii posted:Bah gawd, is that TUV's music?! Edwin "the earth is 4000 years old" Poots (who managed to rack up £40k in legal fees trying to challenge the court of appeals ruling that NI had to extend adoption rights to same sex couples while health minister) is openly sharpening his knives and publicaly voicing disagreement with the party direction on covid restrictions - openly criticising the party when he's as high up as he is is extremely uncommon in the DUP and taken as a pretty big indication that the mumbles of internal dissatisfaction from the old guard of the party against Foster are reaching a possible tipping point. The only other really viable candidate is probably wee Jeffrey Donaldson who is to the right of Foster, once listed his two main influences as Jesus Christ and Enoch Powell (who he used to be election agent for) and still is somehow a better option than Poots kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 22:08
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Pistol_Pete posted:Eh, it'll happen one way or the other, although we may need a few weeks of no-deal chaos to concentrate people's minds sufficiently first. Here's a good FT article explaining why there'll be a deal at the end of all this: Excellent piece, thank you.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:31
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sebzilla posted:This is probably not a good thing for Labour's chances of winning a majority any time soon, right? Less so after 2019. It's mostly small welsh seats that have been depopulating and getting older that used to be safe labour but flipped being abolished, and the new south east seats will probably be in urban centres that have grown alot - Oxford, Cambridge, Hastings etc - which should be more viable than the South East label makes them sound.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:43
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https://twitter.com/jimmfelton/status/1338596409440948226?s=21 Great stuff
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Dec 14, 2020 22:49
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AP is the densest person in the UK, christ
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Dec 14, 2020 23:37
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This is great  https://twitter.com/FloandJoan/status/1338422589782433794?s=08
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Dec 15, 2020 00:40
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Comrade Fakename posted:I don't really put much credence into the "MI5 forced the Guardian to hate Corbyn" theories, because that doesn't really explain why all its writers vociferously defend it on Twitter. The newspaper does seem to accurately reflect the worldview of the people who write it, it doesn't seem like anyone has been coerced. The writers defend their employer, that's not wierd. When I got my first part-time job at GAME I would have defended GAME to the death because GAME was why I had £557 in my bank account each month, it isn't more complicated than that. The writers being poo poo is easily explained and less interesting than the readers being poo poo. Bobby Deluxe posted:I find a lot of Guardian lib thinking is based around infantalising themselves, or falling back on the sort of rules kids learn to stop them fighting. "The grownups are back in the room," "agree to disagree," "be nice," "find a middle ground" etc. I was genuinely surprised the 'I'm baby' meme never hooked into UK libs the way it did for the US libs because you're completely right, it is an infantalising worldview. Bobby Deluxe posted:TLDR: They're dickheads, but they want to sound clever. If you point out they're not clever, that's mean and you're mean for making them think about things. I think you're assuming libs have an objective 'cleverness' value and that absolutely isn't the case. The people we call libs aren't "liberals" because they believe in liberalism to any extent, they're libs because that's the easiest thing to be. If the Guardian had even treated the Corbyn movement neutrally then there would have been a lot more libs supporting us just because they felt it was allowed, and for the record in 2017 most libs did support us libs are not a lost cause, but by 2019 the Guardian had conditioned them not to any actual argument but just that Corbyn People=bad, and isn't it just easier to go along with that?
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Dec 15, 2020 00:42
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I can now give myself a covid test twice a week. Which is good. (False positives notwithstanding). The fact it takes 30 minutes, which is more time than it usually takes me to get ready in the morning, is a bad thing. Because it means I either have to wake up early or get to work late. Also, I'm not exactly at my best shortly after I wake up in the morning, so trying to work out how to actually use the loving thing when I can barely remember my own name is going to be fun.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:48
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British liberalism is standing in a room of people of opposing views, trying to find the barycentre and with a smirk going "see how angry everyone is, wheras I, I am calm. In a way, I'm kind of a moderator. I'm sort of in charge, if you put it like that" and then knocking off a Guardian column over brunch.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:57
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Isomermaid posted:barycentre I had to look up what this means and in doing so learned that the sun is somehow simultaneously orbiting around all the objects that orbit it?
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Dec 15, 2020 01:03
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sebzilla posted:This is probably not a good thing for Labour's chances of winning a majority any time soon, right? It's having far less effect than it would have done if they'd pushed ahead with reducing the Commons to 600 seats. They have kept the ideas of greatly reducing the permitted variation in electorate sizes (to within 5% either way of the average number of electors per constituency) and reducing the general Welsh over-representation. Reducing the permitted variation does work in favour of the Tories, insofar as it goes some way to removing a long-standing bias in favour of Labour. With the current boundaries it takes thousands more votes to elect an average Conservative MP than it does a Labour MP, because Conservative-favouring constituencies tend to have more electors in them than Labour-favouring ones do and there is much greater permitted variation.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:03
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The devil is in the detail, though. From what I've heard my constituency is losing a fairly staunch red town and gaining a smaller, bluer one, making our swing seat less swingy and having basically no effect on the Tory as gently caress constituencies around us.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:06
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kecske posted:I had to look up what this means and in doing so learned that the sun is somehow simultaneously orbiting around all the objects that orbit it? Yes, because gravity works both ways, the sun just has a lot more of it than the rest of the solar system. It usually applies to systems with multiple stars or to things like pluto/charon where the two objects are comparable in mass, they orbit around their mutual center of gravity, it's just for most object groupings that point is inside the most massive object. It's like if you ever watch someone do a hammer toss, they don't just spin round with the hammer held out, they lean back and the spinning happens around a point somewhere between their body and the hammer, that's the barycenter. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 01:07
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The earth-moon system isn't that far away from being a system where the barycenter is outside either.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:11
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Also true, the moon is unusually big compared to the size of the earth.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:12
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sebzilla posted:The devil is in the detail, though. From what I've heard my constituency is losing a fairly staunch red town and gaining a smaller, bluer one, making our swing seat less swingy and having basically no effect on the Tory as gently caress constituencies around us. Aren't you a stalward 'I left Labour and am drat proud of it too' type? Seems wierd to be even paying attention to such trifles don't you have a far more effective extra-electoral mass movement to be posting about?
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Dec 15, 2020 01:14
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Isomermaid posted:British liberalism is standing in a room of people of opposing views, trying to find the barycentre and with a smirk going "see how angry everyone is, wheras I, I am calm. In a way, I'm kind of a moderator. I'm sort of in charge, if you put it like that" and then knocking off a Guardian column over brunch. I won't have these attacks on Richard Ayoade.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:16
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Vitamin P posted:Aren't you a stalward 'I left Labour and am drat proud of it too' type? Seems wierd to be even paying attention to such trifles don't you have a far more effective extra-electoral mass movement to be posting about? No I'm a "the Labour Party is full of shitheads who I don't want to give money to but I don't really know what else to do so I'd like it to get better please" type as evidenced by my posting some 24 hours ago. sebzilla posted:That's true but I'm yet to see a realistic parliamentary alternative materialise. I quit the party some months ago but seeing the various fights going on against Starmer/Evans and the 100+ CLPs that have passed votes on that basis I'm wondering if we might be giving up too soon. Obviously it depends on your local party but if there are winnable fights to be had around getting decent candidates for the next elections etc. then those might be fights worth having. I dunno, really. At the moment I'm just angry and directionless, at least within the Labour Party I might get to shout at some centrists every now and then.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:29
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The anti-semitism topic has been removed from under the article. I just looked.
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Dec 15, 2020 02:01
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Vitamin P posted:The writers defend their employer, that's not wierd. When I got my first part-time job at GAME I would have defended GAME to the death because GAME was why I had £557 in my bank account each month, it isn't more complicated than that. The writers being poo poo is easily explained and less interesting than the readers being poo poo. Are you saying that all the Guardian journos actually really liked Corbyn, but just trashed him both in the pages of their newspaper and then also every loving where else for half a decade just out of a forelock-tugging deference to their bosses? You know the editors of the Guardian never stood up on a milk crate in the office to announce that they officially hate Corbyn from now on? I’ve never seen any evidence that the political beliefs of these idiots aren’t sincerely held by them. Comrade Fakename fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 02:41
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I think the suggestion is they work for a poo poo paper with a poo poo editorial line so they will become poo poo because their jobs depend on it even if they were not personally predisposed to be poo poo otherwise. Though I don't know if that necessarily applies when they're also all rich failchildren who probably think that way anyway the way it does with people who work retail for money.
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Dec 15, 2020 02:44
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Probably a bit of both to be honest.
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Dec 15, 2020 03:08
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Dawn Foster worked for the Guardian and tried to write something that was not poo poo (criticising Tom Watson) and they canned her.
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Dec 15, 2020 03:12
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Barry Center is the mathematical average of all newspaper columnists, given human form by an annual arcane ritual that creates all government policy
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Dec 15, 2020 03:33
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For overnight pondering: My almost-5-year old great-niece wants to interview me on zoom as to why I don't celebrate christmas. I'm under strict instructions from my sister (grandma to said child) that I'm not to disillusion her or tell her anything different to what she's learning at her (church) school. So, I said to her, you mean without mentioning the stench of hypocrisy, the reek of capitalism and the pong of commercialization..... nor the pre-existing pagan festivals around the same time of year then? No - none of that, she said. As I don't have the option of saying "I'm a {name your religion here}" or "I'm a {name your Christian group that doesn't celebrate xmas eg the Wee Frees}", I'm at a bit of a loss what to say that isn't outright dishonest. There's only so much I can fob off with 'when you're a big girl ask me again'. (This kid is very bright and remembers everything) She wanted to do it this evening (Mon) but I managed to put it off til Wednesday evening. If anyone has any good ideas, more than happy to hear them. (I've got private message now if anyone doesn't want to disillusion the Believers in Santa ITT). This is the time of year when I put my Bah Humbug hat on (which my sister gave me some years ago).
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Dec 15, 2020 03:33
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I mean personally I would tell her that her (grand)mother doesn't want her to know why but then I don't have any family with children that I want to stay attached to. I suppose if you want to you could try and phrase it in a christian friendly way and say that the way people celebrate christmas isn't very christian but I dunno that might turn her into a raving tradcath. Seems daft really, if the kid wants to know and you're not allowed to answer then what's the point? If she is a bright child I don't think it will hurt her to learn complicated ideas like "there are better things in life than spending lots of money and a lot of people have to work hard so that your christmas presents get to you, so when you get older and you learn about that it starts to become less fun, but there are other things we can do that can still be fun" Seems a shame to waste a smart girl's mind on stuffing it full of simple platitudes. What she doesn't get will go over her head and what she does might help her learn. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 03:37
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OwlFancier posted:I mean personally I would tell her that her (grand)mother doesn't want her to know why but then I don't have any family with children that I want to stay attached to. I think she could take it but maybe not when Xmas is in 10 days, I agree about the platitudes stuff. Maybe I'll run with the Jedi Knight thing (seeing as that's what I put on my census form in 2001) or maybe brush up on humanism (which I've never really looked into either - I don't really feel the need to define/limit myself in these kind of ways).
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Dec 15, 2020 03:46
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*shrug* I think it is more in the interest of her parents than anything, I can't imagine a kid is likely to be introspective when they've got presents, parents probably just don't want to think about awkward questions. Then again I can't remember believing in santa or ever being told there was no such thing so I dunno. Maybe some kids are very invested in it? I dunno, i don't get lying to kids really, would rather break ideas down to things they can relate to and if it doesn't all stick so what? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 03:50
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This sounds like the sort of thing where you could use some clever Socratic questioning to guide her towards some realisations on her own without actually telling her anything yourself.
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Dec 15, 2020 08:35
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose if you want to you could try and phrase it in a christian friendly way and say that the way people celebrate christmas isn't very christian but I dunno that might turn her into a raving tradcath. Also it's true. 
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Dec 15, 2020 08:58
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Tell her how the Santa Claus story is a method of social control that parents use to coerce incurious children into being compliant.
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Dec 15, 2020 09:03
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I'd go with truth that doesn't upset the applecart but gives lines for an enquiring mind to follow. Something like Jesus's birthday and Santa don't have anything to do with each other but have become so intertwined that I'm not happy celebrating Christmas. Can go further and mention that the Bible never says when Jesus was born, and that Christian theologians seem to think he was born in August or whenever.
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Dec 15, 2020 09:36
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This Zoom call is a no-win situation. Don't do it. Whatever you do will inevitably a) piss off your sister b) confuse your niece c) make you feel like poo poo.
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Dec 15, 2020 09:37
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Necrothatcher posted:This Zoom call is a no-win situation. Don't do it. Whatever you do will inevitably a) piss off your sister b) confuse your niece c) make you feel like poo poo. The trouble is how to get out of it though, because saying no at this point would also probably piss off your sister, confuse your niece, and make you feel like poo poo. imo, this was an unfair situation for you to be put in - would a heartfelt chat about how you really don't want to upset anyone but genuinely can't think of what to say without treading on anyone's toes be enough to persuade sister/sister's kids to bail you out?
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Dec 15, 2020 09:50
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:For overnight pondering: Put on some green face paint. "I'm a Grinch!" Problem solved within the confines of a capitalistic Christmas worldview. It might ruin your relationship with her though.  Edit: Or try to fake technical difficulties? Unplug your router or cover it in foil...
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Dec 15, 2020 09:53
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But Jaeluni, why don't you celebrate Christmas?  I used to hate it but have been getting back into the spirit this year. I love the tackiness of it, have been listening to Christmas music of my own free will now its not forced on me in public spaces and might even send Christmas cards this year. Yes its capitalistic and removed from various traditions and is an awful time for a lot of people, but on the other hand I quite like the smell of tinsel. Maybe just talk about Christmases you've had and how people celebrate Christmas differently in other places, even if its just saying that other countries have their own Christmas songs? You don't need to mention different beliefs, but the idea that there are a plurarity of cultures around the world that celebrate Christmas is part and parcel of the idea of Santa flying around the world delivering presents and general black magic of Christmas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UVUW11FENs though I was watching a documentary on youtube the other day about this very subject and they said Father Christmas doesn't exist so its a veritable minefield of Christmas disaster whatever approach there is. Can anyone else sit in on the call? I don't think you need to tell fibs, just frame it in a certain way (she is only 4 after all)
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Dec 15, 2020 10:05
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Necrothatcher posted:This Zoom call is a no-win situation. Don't do it. Whatever you do will inevitably a) piss off your sister b) confuse your niece c) make you feel like poo poo. Yeah this seems like a trap. I'm guessing your sister wants it to happen so she has an easy to swallow answer and drops it there, whereas refusing to answer will just make her more curious. Like when my dad wouldn't let me watch Robocop.
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Dec 15, 2020 10:07
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