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Sanitary Naptime posted:If you want a picture of the future, imagine Toby Young I won't go all techbro and say that rational enlightened academics will save us while the commentariat sit in their underwear wishing they could go back to Pret, but a bit more of that attitude elsewhere would be nice. e: In 1660 Charles II returns to England and immediately grants a bunch of his supporters land rights in the Carolinas, in addition to having his son establish the Royal African Company to, uh, trade between West Africa and those plantations. Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 15:44
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https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ this is a cool article about how it works
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Dec 29, 2020 15:48
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the pandemic worldwide generally has had a pro-incumbent effect, regardless of a left- or right-leaning government in power; Johnson's government not seeing such a bounce and instead steadily falling as the Brexit honeymoon wore off is about the extent of its polling penalty for its mismanagement but, yes, not shocking that 1) most people respond to a sense of crisis by preferring safety, and conversely support redistributive or reformative politics more when they feel wealthy and safe, not the converse, and likewise that 2) a minority of people have the opposite moral instincts, view the world in exploitation/injustice moral frame, and they're all congregating ITT. And find the former group deeply alien/repulsive/etc.
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Dec 29, 2020 15:54
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:What is this new wage threshold? I seem to have missed that? They have brought in a £25k yearly wage minimum as part of the immigration changes related to Brexit. It was going to be over £30k i think but they toned it down a bit, but it doesn't help carers. I think it only impacts new arrivals after 1st Jan though. e: link: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/09/boris-johnson-to-lower-30000-wage-threshold-for-immigrants
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Dec 29, 2020 15:56
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We, of course, do not prefer safety, and our rejection of the status quo is entirely moralistic and nothing to do with its inability to provide us any safety.
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Dec 29, 2020 15:56
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ronya posted:the pandemic worldwide generally has had a pro-incumbent effect, regardless of a left- or right-leaning government in power; Johnson's government not seeing such a bounce and instead steadily falling as the Brexit honeymoon wore off is about the extent of its polling penalty for its mismanagement I'm not sure it's accurate to characterise them as preferring safety, if they're supporting the governments that are very demonstrably failing to keep them safe?
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Dec 29, 2020 15:57
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XMNN posted:I'm not sure it's accurate to characterise them as preferring safety, if they're supporting the governments that are very demonstrably failing to keep them safe? the perception of safety then if not the reality. "you don't change a horse mid race" etc
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Dec 29, 2020 16:03
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'safety' in the sense of the known/unknown - the comfort of the familiar etc. - you know, the topic just being discussed
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Dec 29, 2020 16:06
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XMNN posted:https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/  Gagaaφaac sounds like one of them that commands several legions in hell.  I was going to say it sounded a bit 'DNA For Programmers' but it's the same guy so yes. Cerv posted:the perception of safety then if not the reality.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:13
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XMNN posted:https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ That actually all seems fairly straight forward, I’m guessing the difficult part in biosciences like this is actually getting the code you want written since I’m guessing it needs a shitload of solutions, chopping rna up and splicing bits of it in and suchlike.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:16
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The big difference appears that in the biosciences one slight touch from the wrong person can gently caress the whole thing up, whereas with programming that can happen remotely.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:18
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OwlFancier posted:We, of course, do not prefer safety, and our rejection of the status quo is entirely moralistic and nothing to do with its inability to provide us any safety. For most people, even the 2019 world,, pre-pandemic, was measurably safer than 2020. Let alone 2012, pre-Brexit and pre-austerity. So yes, I suspect you so little value safety you can’t even be bothered to think about it, and accept it is a trade-off you are making.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:32
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ronya posted:"Liberal Beveridge-flavoured postwar-consensus ambitions but on a larger scale" as opposed to "actually-existing Bolsheviks who are, by then-observation, actually unexpectedly successful and prosperous" is maybe not the point against reformism you might think it is... Attlee did then rapidly absorb 1951 as a lesson that in fact any embrace of preserving wartime nationalization was a bridge too far etc. I'm rejecting the broader idea that you have to for some reason return to the previous status quo as a part of improving things. To use OPs original burning-house analogy - once the fire is out you don't restore the wiring that caused the fire *then* think about repairing the rest of the damage, then replacing the wiring, you fix the whole thing.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:33
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Not a bad dissassembly of 'wow 2020 what a year' thinking: https://spicypolitics.tumblr.com/post/637094776644190208/2020-is-almost-over-and-all-i-gotta-say-is-what
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Dec 29, 2020 16:56
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radmonger posted:For most people, even the 2019 world,, pre-pandemic, was measurably safer than 2020. Let alone 2012, pre-Brexit and pre-austerity. I suppose it does presume that the person doing the thinking is not so much of a loving moron that they think all of those things are unrelated. How many disasters does it take before you start thinking that your society is predisposed to causing them?
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Dec 29, 2020 16:56
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radmonger posted:Thing is, he spent the years up until 1945 helping ensure Britain was not losing a war to Nazi Germany. Only having done so, restoring the pre-war status quo, did he and his colleagues try to fix the issues with that status quo. So, e.g. welfare state measures like the NHS were proposed as the solution to the spiral of depression into war that had dominated the last 2 decades. Success with fixing one problem won them a mandate to apply them. And yes, they did plan and think that through beforehand; you do need that vision, an answer to the question ‘what will stop the bad things just happening again?’ This is the weirdest interpretation of the words "status quo" I've ever read. I mean yes the status quo was "not at war with Germany" but the damage done to the physical and social fabric of the country didn't magically restore itself on VE Day. The Tory manifestio was literally "We can make it 1939 again then think of ways we can make it better"; rejecting that kind of thinking and recognising that there were massive flaws with the country before the first shot was fired, and proposing concrete ways of improving them (often, of course literally concrete) was what delivered the biggest victory in Labour party history and more importantly delivered the largest change to British society since the Industrial Revolution. In the same way, the (in many ways worse*) damage wrought by 10+ years of Torydom (the mismanagement of the pandemic being only another example of this rather than a unique one-off event) will not be magically erased once someone in a red rosette is in Number 10, and in fact the belief it will be is part of the same liberal brainworms that think magically turning the clock back to 27/6/12 is desirable or even possible, it's a purely superficial worldview, that the problems with the country are only at the surface and we can just rearrange the deckchairs into a nicer pattern. Someone earlier in the thread described Starmer as planning how to be the most popular man after the apocalypse rather than working to stop the apocalypse and I think that's an absolutely perfect summation both of him and the general abdication of responsibility for the state of the world that the entire political class has done since the 90s. * This is not hyperbole. As well as more excess deaths per-year than WW2 managed *even before covid hit us*, Britain in 2020 is further behind Britain in 2010 in things like poverty, malnutrition and even available housing than it fell 1939-1945. A greater proportion of the population is living in unsuitable accommodation (overcrowded/unsafe/unsuitable for purpose) than were in 1945 - the Luftwaffe did less damage to our housing stock than neoliberalism. Any solution to these problems not only shouldn't have "return to how it was before" as an intermediate step, doing so is explicitly wasting energy, time and money to make our lives harder just to give people a warm nostalgic glow.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:57
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goddamnedtwisto posted:The Luftwaffe did less damage to our housing stock than neoliberalism. 
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Dec 29, 2020 16:59
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radmonger posted:For most people, even the 2019 world,, pre-pandemic, was measurably safer than 2020. Let alone 2012, pre-Brexit and pre-austerity. 2012 was 2 years into austerity, something like 20,000 people had already died as a result of cuts to health and social care, disabled people were being forced into poverty, and an entire generation had lost any hope of access to anything but gig economy work. *This* is the exact kind of privileged worldview that is behind our disdain for melt nostalgia. What you mean (or at least what it sounds like you mean) is "by this point the complete fuckedness of society wasn't personally affecting me, so can we go back to that please?".
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Dec 29, 2020 17:02
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Someone earlier in the thread described Starmer as planning how to be the most popular man after the apocalypse rather than working to stop the apocalypse and I think that's an absolutely perfect summation both of him and the general abdication of responsibility for the state of the world that the entire political class has done since the 90s.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:06
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Implying that britane can be improved suggests that it was not already perfect, until the left ruined it.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:10
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OwlFancier posted:Implying that britane can be improved suggests that it was not already perfect, until the left ruined it.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:16
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Guavanaut posted:For all the sneering from the right and centrists about how "the left hate Britain" it's only the left that seem to propose things that make Britain better, the NHS, the National Giro, board accountability for water, gas, and schools, social housing. I've not heard any big ideas for projects from anyone else, it's all "let undercovers touch kids" and "copy some of Trump's bad ideas, space force maybe?" amid slow managerial decline. Of course you don't hear good ideas from centrists, because didn't you know better things aren't possible? And the 'good' ideas from the right wing are being implemented, they're just not... good ideas. Kleptocracy and leaving the EU/increasing racism and border controls are happening in all their glory, which are the only ideas the right wing meaningfully put forward.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:17
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It's also a big part of what cost Hillary the 2016 election, "America is already great" alienated a lot of people, but it seems that dynamic works differently here. e: ^^^ They never suggest building anything though, except maybe more prisons and impractical bridges to Ireland (to fill the prisons?  ), never anything positive.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:18
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I mean you say it in jest, but 'how dare you suggest britane isn't already grate' is a centrepiece of the minds that came up with words like 'remoaner.' Guavanaut posted:It's also a big part of what cost Hillary the 2016 election, "America is already great" alienated a lot of people, but it seems that dynamic works differently here. I don't entirely say it in jest and I also think that the "until the left ruined it" bit is important too. There is a strong element of nationalism whereby the nation posesses an inherent greatness which cannot be improved upon, but which can absolutely be threatened by the wrong type of people, under the guise of "improving" it. So it can simultaneously be possible to say that we cannot change things about the nation, because that would be making it worse, and also that it must be restored to its former glory by undoing things that have been done to it. It's very fashy, obviously, with the appeal to restoring a former prelapsarian glory by purging undesirable elements, and the  element. But I think it is a streak of thinking that runs through a lot of people and is probably a manifestation of the same utterly brain dead conservatism that leads people towards political frog boiling.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:24
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goddamnedtwisto posted:I'm rejecting the broader idea that you have to for some reason return to the previous status quo as a part of improving things. To use OPs original burning-house analogy - once the fire is out you don't restore the wiring that caused the fire *then* think about repairing the rest of the damage, then replacing the wiring, you fix the whole thing. certainly one doesn't have to, but this is straying a little from the original argument over whether an rhetoric of a return to sanity/normalcy (in a woe-is-me human-interest column, no less, not a stirring polemic or an essay setting out to be one) has any pathos... my point here re: Attlee is highlighting that he wasn't seizing a crisis to introduce novel new changes but instead seizing the imminent end of one to implement a broad programme whose strokes had two or three decades of antecedents and local experimentation and consensus formation during the coalition government (esp amongst the Rab Butlerite Tories). During the war itself the Beveridge report (1942) and assorted papers on postwar social insurance, employment, etc. (1943-1944) already enjoyed cross-party agreement. Churchill would go to the same election campaigning on a health service, a housing construction plan, etc. So, as tortured analogies go, this is more like already planning a rebuild when a convenient fire happens to handle the demolition-permit paperwork there are other leaders to invoke in a seizing-a-crisis metaphor... Attlee and the formation of the postwar social democratic consensus is an awkward choice of example though
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Dec 29, 2020 17:25
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Lungboy posted:They have brought in a £25k yearly wage minimum as part of the immigration changes related to Brexit. It was going to be over £30k i think but they toned it down a bit, but it doesn't help carers. I think it only impacts new arrivals after 1st Jan though. Honestly while the threshold isn't great by far a bigger barrier is the amount of money you and your employer has to pay to apply. And we're talking low thousands of pounds here. Plus it does help with the wage exploitation a little, though obviously a lot of jobs just, well, don't pay that much no matter who is doing it.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:28
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Atlee was in kind of a unique position because a lot of people had relatives who were in WW1 who acutely remembered coming back home after war, being bankrupted by medical debt while also totally unemployed due to no jobs before being told there is also no houses for povos with no money or income. The whole “building a better Britain for heroes” thing really resonated with a lot of people because of that. Also the IRA got a ton of help out of WW1 because of that - lots of Irish troops came home and got basically told to get hosed by the brits for being in the army And now unemployed and on the dole and hence ended up taking up arms in the IRA In the 1918-22 revolution.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:29
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goddamnedtwisto posted:I'm rejecting the broader idea that you have to for some reason return to the previous status quo as a part of improving things. To use OPs original burning-house analogy - once the fire is out you don't restore the wiring that caused the fire *then* think about repairing the rest of the damage, then replacing the wiring, you fix the whole thing. It's interesting to see played out in this thread something that happens in wider politics but which isn't ever really investigated. How the choice and rise to dominance of a particular analogy constrains the discourse that follows. National credit card for example. To continue this one- if you asked the shocked and smoke stained survivors looking at the ruin of their house what they wanted, they'd probably say "I just want my home back". You'd have to push them to get over their status quo bias and recognise that obviously actually better wiring would have to go without saying, and while you're at it maybe some boarding in the loft... It seems like progress past the old status quo has to be articulated through a really narrow gap. With reference to the previous status quo, showing how it could be bettered, yet without going so far as to fall into this trap: Bobby Deluxe posted:'how dare you suggest britane isn't already grate'
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Dec 29, 2020 17:30
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Guavanaut posted:It's also a big part of what cost Hillary the 2016 election, "America is already great" alienated a lot of people, but it seems that dynamic works differently here. Well no of course they didn't they're fascists
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Dec 29, 2020 17:31
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Guavanaut posted:For all the sneering from the right and centrists about how "the left hate Britain" it's only the left that seem to propose things that make Britain better, the NHS, the National Giro, board accountability for water, gas, and schools, social housing. This is absolutely true, and there were times in 2019 when I wished Labour had been brave and bold enough to take this pitch. I can absolutely understand why the left are wary (or even dead against) using rhetoric based on patriotism/national renewal/Britain Strong because it's trying to harness forces and ideas which can easily just end up running counter to the intention. But being willing to state a case that lefty policies make the bit of the world we're currently responsible for better both for those living in it and as a whole social and economic system would be nice. It's like how everyone (well, the commentariat) were praising Johnson's 'optimism' and how that was why his platform was so appealing against Labour who just went on about how poo poo everything was. But 'optimism' is just one of those ways of saying 'things I think are good'. Labour published a whole red book full of transformative ideas they thought would make Britain a better place. You can't get more optimistic than that. But it involved taxing rich people a bit more and didn't involve being lovely to foreigners so that's not the right sort of optimistic vision. I've grown so loving tired over the past year of trying to correct people who say that Labour's problem was that they didn't offer anything to 'ordinary people', as if the manifesto just said 'Houses For All Who Turn Up At Dover' on one page and 'Legally Enforce All 72 Genders' on the other. It was packed with stuff aimed at 'ordinary people'. Sorry for all that, I think I'm still in a bit of a funk from the one-year-from-the-loving-GE-versary without really knowing it!
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Dec 29, 2020 17:32
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OwlFancier posted:I don't entirely say it in jest and I also think that the "until the left ruined it" bit is important too. There is a strong element of nationalism whereby the nation posesses an inherent greatness which cannot be improved upon, but which can absolutely be threatened by the wrong type of people, under the guise of "improving" it. So it can simultaneously be possible to say that we cannot change things about the nation, because that would be making it worse, and also that it must be restored to its former glory by undoing things that have been done to it. You're all correct, I think. Right/fash: "Restore [country] to its rightful greatness, like before the leftliberals ruined it" Actual liberals: "[Country] is already great, don't fiddle with it (much)" Actual left: "We should improve society somewhat" The difference is in timing. Hilary saying "America is already great" during the 2016 election would be the equivalent of Ed Miliband* fighting the 2010 election on a platform of "the UK is already great" (which would have gone over just as badly). After 10 years of Tory austerity, the liberals want "change", but only to put it back the way it was, so it doesn't really count. See Biden and the reassurance that sensibleness has prevailed and we can go back to brunch. It's sort of a seesaw between "too mean and saying the quiet part loud" and "too liberal and gay", with added Overton-shifting ratchet because the right are better at cementing their changes (exceptions exist). *because Gordon Brown had served too many terms or something, I don't know
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Dec 29, 2020 17:40
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goddamnedtwisto posted:This is the weirdest interpretation of the words "status quo" I've ever read. I mean yes the status quo was "not at war with Germany" but the damage done to the physical and social fabric of the country didn't magically restore itself on VE Day. The Tory manifestio was literally "We can make it 1939 again then think of ways we can make it better"; rejecting that kind of thinking and recognising that there were massive flaws with the country before the first shot was fired, and proposing concrete ways of improving them (often, of course literally concrete) was what delivered the biggest victory in Labour party history and more importantly delivered the largest change to British society since the Industrial Revolution. That’s a great line in a very good post.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:46
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goddamnedtwisto posted:2012 was 2 years into austerity, something like 20,000 people had already died as a result of cuts to health and social care, disabled people were being forced into poverty, and an entire generation had lost any hope of access to anything but gig economy work. *This* is the exact kind of privileged worldview that is behind our disdain for melt nostalgia. What you mean (or at least what it sounds like you mean) is "by this point the complete fuckedness of society wasn't personally affecting me, so can we go back to that please?". I’m happy to take 2010 as a baseline; 2012 is just a thread meme, picking it rather than 2 years earlier isn’t something you should try and read any great significance into. I’ll lay out what I am trying to say clearly: Thesis: 2010 was better in many ways than 2020. Antithesis: 2010 sucked Synthesis: any program of incremental progress that starts from here will pass through a stage of being roughly as good as 2010 before it gets better. But after that it, if successful, _will_ be better. Because better things are in fact possible. One basis for such a program would be to get the people who see the two haves of the synthesis, stop them throwing insults at each other, and instead understand how both partial truths fit into a whole.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:52
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If people wanted it to be better than their preferred ideal time they wouldn't keep saying they want it to be their ideal time, and that time would not, in fact, be ideal. I don't see why on earth you are so invested in trying to convince me that the lovely status quo liberals are not real and are in fact actually the true campaigners for improvement like some kind of reverse ronya.
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Dec 29, 2020 18:00
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the war did not substantially alter the accreting ideological paradigm shift to the 'Keynesian consensus'-era notion that governments were duty-bound to stabilize the National Economy; it was the Depression that drove that to mainstream consciousness. The Conservatives took longer to reconcile themselves to it but by 1945 the party is already theoretically committed to it (albeit loudly grumbling about doing so) if there is a a contemporary equivalent on the extent of the leftward swing in the zeitgeist today - certainly arguments over environmental sustainability, tax evasion, and domestic wealth gaps have stuck; these are the new hot topics that have replaced the previous set of fair trade, persistent organic pollutants, global south, etc. This is not quite at the level of 'already passing white papers with broad bipartisan consensus' though, to say the least, and of course the previous anxieties did lead to concrete policies that have stuck and have had measureable material impacts, but not especially radical ones ronya fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 18:02
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The Question IRL posted:Have more women involved in the running of it. Since women are less likely to be Nazi's and more likely to try and engage in compassionate based social systems. I think that's pretty drat optimistic. I mean remember known compassionate prime ministers of this country Thatcher and May? Or the 55% of white women who thought Trump was the bestiest possible President in 2020 and voted accordingly? Edit: alternatively, check out the number of women who voted for Literally Adolf Hitler. There's not actually much in it compared to the men. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 18:05
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There should be a function added to the site which replaces Ronya posts with "BETTER THINGS AREN'T POSSIBLE"
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Dec 29, 2020 18:07
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I'm singing it now, things can only get better They can only get better if we see it through That means me and I mean you too
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Dec 29, 2020 18:11
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Seems Spain is registering those who refuse the vaccine, I'm always a little uneasy about government database's as they aren't always the best.
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Dec 29, 2020 18:14
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MonkeyLibFront posted:Seems Spain is registering those who refuse the vaccine, I'm always a little uneasy about government database's as they aren't always the best. It depends if it's 16, 32 or 64 bit.
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