UKMT January and a bit of February 2016: Marxist Theory and Danczuk Memes

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT January and a bit of February 2016: Marxist Theory and Danczuk Memes

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

AceClown posted:

Also what toppings do you lot like on your crumpets? :canofworms:

Vegemite, best yeast-derived spreadable condiment

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 14:56

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:47

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Dabir posted:

That's a grouse, not a snipe.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 16:28

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

It would be good if the plot twist was that the terrists in question were the IRA and they were using all that money the Yanks funnelled to them in the 80s and 90s.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 17:23

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

dispatch_async posted:

I don't like any of this, but I'm finding it difficult to continue fooling myself that the immigration issue is just going to go away for Labour.

It's not going to go away for anyone. One of the polling companies (I think it's Ipsos-MORI) do a poll where they ask people what they're most concerned about and immigration has been in the top 3 for at least a decade. High levels of immigration are very unpopular with the public at large.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 16:29

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Antares posted:

I lived near a Southall Road that got changed to SourBalls Road. Always appreciated the creativity

Southampton has a Grope Lane, which is a modern politening-up of its original name, Gropecunt Lane.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 20:13

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Guavanaut posted:

Oh god the social media outpouring will be terrible.

He was pretty awesome as Snape tbf

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 13:54

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Tesseraction posted:

More seriously, oil is a cyclical business, it would be pretty lovely right now but when the oil price recovers (and supply-side economics guarantees it will) then Scotland would most likely be able to recover its debt and then some. Norway does pretty decently because of its sovereign wealth fund built when oil is selling well so even if the oil industry goes deep into poo poo they're still cruising smoothly for the foreseeable future.

The Irish Free State began life with a huge budget deficit that wasn't paid off (IIRC) until the 1930s. I think the economic argument often kinda misses the point, that a country that really wants independence will be happy to put up with some degree of (probably temporary) economic hardship to obtain it.

If you went to Dublin today and argued that independence was a mistake because times were tough for a couple of decades 80 years ago I don't think you'd convince many people that their ancestors had made a mistake.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 10:21

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Although, to argue against myself a bit, oil may be a cyclical business but the fall in north sea production isn't, it's been happening since 1999. The oil is running out and it becomes less relevant with every passing year.

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# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 10:24

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

lmaoboy1998 posted:

Without the economic case the already insufficient support base halves, and the economic case is demonstrably wrong. The only way independence happens is if the SNP successfully convinces people that 2+2 = $110 a barrel forever and Scotland's going to be the new Sweden - but people seem less and less inclined to believe that.

I'm not saying economic issues don't matter, I'm just saying they're not a slam-dunk. No-one is saying Scotland would be plunged into 19th century style poverty. There'd be an unpleasant economic cost to independence but it isn't unsupportable or an existential threat to Scotland's viability as a nation.

I am saying, as a slightly different point, that the oil price is becoming less and less relevant literally by the month. It doesn't matter whether it's $11, $110 or $1,110 a barrel forever because within the next decade Britain/Scotland will be producing near enough no oil. It's slightly weird that the economic case turns so strongly on something that is demonstrably temporary, way past its peak and in the middle of a terminal decline.

Zephro fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jan 15, 2016

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 11:37

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Random fun fact: I don't have the figures in front of me but I once worked out that in 1999 (when north sea production peaked) Britain was something like the 9th biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, ahead of Kuwait, the UAE and Nigeria.

edit: here are some figs for 2002, which are sourced from the EIA despite it being a peak-oil wingnut website:

http://peak-oil.org/peak-oil-reference/peak-oil-data/production-and-peak-dates-by-country/

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 11:47

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Tesseraction posted:

Apologies for being slow to reply to this but it's worth pointing out that this is British production and the decline is more political than shrinking of reserves. North Sea Oil is not running out for the foreseeable future and non-UK production is still plenty high. Heck, the government even chucked several million on exploration this year despite the industry being in the shitter.

Yes, it's British production and not Scottish, so an independent Scotland would only be producing some fraction of that number.

The reserves aren't running out in the sense that there are plenty of oil molecules left in the ground. But the North Sea is a really expensive place to drill for oil and the low hanging fruit is all gone. What's left is in difficult reservoirs, with really high pressures and/or temperatures, or is out in places like the west of Shetland where there is no pipeline infrastructure to connect to, or is in tiny fields that are barely worth drilling into (the discovery of the Buzzard field half a decade ago was huge news cos it had ~500m barrels, which is really not much by global standards, but quite big for a tired, declining basin like the North Sea. Most of the finds there are in the tens of millions of range, which is nothing.

Years of historically high oil prices did nothing at all to slow the decline of North Sea production, and if those small, difficult, remote fields aren't worth exploiting at $100 a barrel, which they weren't, they certainly aren't worth exploiting now.

The reason the government is having to directly subsidise the oil industry (I mean Christ, think about that) by giving them free money to do exploration is because they are aware that the companies won't do it themselves because it is too expensive for the poor return they wound get. The government is trying to protect high skilled jobs in the industry, not betting that it can reverse a fifteen-years-in-a-row decline in production.

North Sea production has been falling rapidly for 15 years through low oil prices and high ones and that trend is going to continue. The figures for 2016 will be lower than for 2015 and 2017 will be lower again. It's basically dead as a place for exploration. The oil really is running out.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 14:12

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/terrorism-act-incompatible-with-human-rights-court-rules-in-david-miranda-case

quote:

Terrorism Act incompatible with human rights, court rules in David Miranda case

Appeal court says detention of Miranda at Heathrow was lawful but act under which he was held is not compatiable with European human rights convention

The Terrorism Act 2000 is incompatible with the European convention on human rights, the master of the rolls, Lord Dyson, has declared as part of a court of appeal judgment.

His judgment came in the case of the detention of a man detained at Heathrow airport for carrying files related to information obtained by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Dyson�s decision will force government ministers to re-examine the act, which has now been found to be inconsistent with European law.

However, the judges concluded that the police decision to detain David Miranda, the partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, at Heathrow Airport in 2013 was lawful.

One quote from the judgment:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/689404784076451840

Glenn Greenwald posted:

Govt's use of law is "to use the word 'terrorism' in a way that bears no relationship to any ordinary understanding of the concept"

Can someone explain what this means? How can it have been lawful if the act in question doesn't comply with human rights law?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 12:16

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Saying "we'll leave the UK if you tax us" is definitely terrorism, by the look of it.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 12:35

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

LemonDrizzle posted:

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/689422053544361984

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/689422006131908611

That leads to a twitter error page, fwiw.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 14:10

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Phoon posted:

Only london gets nationalised transport, whilst everyone else has private. it's very blatant

London's free-wheeling, laissez-faire, market-driven economy requires that we, um, sort of nationalise all the important infrastructure....LOOK! A TERRORIST!

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 13:23

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

There are eight planets and probably billions of TNOs. The planet club is much more "exclusive", so it doesn't seem all that odd as a jaunty way of describing the operation of of astronomical bureaucracy.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 20:23

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Gonzo McFee posted:

Hey, did you know there is no housing crisis and never was one?

http://capx.co/there-is-no-uk-housing-crisis-and-there-never-was-one/

What's the point of comparing rents to inflation? Shelter isn't a substitutable good; you can't really decide "oh well, houses are a bit pricey so I guess I'll live in a cardboard box under the Westway so I've got some cash left over to pay for my animes". The only meaningful comparison is to earnings, and specifically to earnings growth among those most likely to be renting (so the young, poor and insecure).

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 19:30

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Cerebral Bore posted:

As opposed to using the Vanguard submarines with nuclear weapons, which by definition are never going to be used unless everything has gone irrevocably to poo poo already? At least a conventional Trident could be used for blowing up tents in the desert or something, and thus give them subs something to actually do besides inducing war boners.

Why would you do this, though, when you already have cruise missiles (that can be launched from submarines if we really want to)? Launching an ICBM with a conventional warhead is

1) Incredibly dangerous because if Russia or China or Pakistan or North Korea or whoever sees something on their radar with a sub-orbital ballistic trajectory they are going to be really loving nervous that someone just launched a first strike at them. "It looks like a nuclear-tipped missile, has the flight profile of a nuclear-tipped missile, was launched from a submarine designed explicitly to carry nuclear-tipped missiles, but we have a piece of paper here saying it's not nuclear-tipped, honest!"
2) Incredibly expensive because suborbital rockets cost a lot of money
3) Really dumb because sub-orbital rockets are not very accurate, which is not a problem when they're carrying nuclear bombs but a bit more of an issue when they aren't.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 20:21

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Cerebral Bore posted:

So why's Corbs the dumb one for wanting to get rid of the things, again?

I don't think he is necessarily. Even Tony Blair says in his memoirs somewhere that he flirted with scrapping Trident and spending the money on soldiers and helicopters instead. But fitting them with conventional warheads makes them even more useless than just scrapping them since it makes them actively dangerous.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 20:42

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

serious gaylord posted:

He was acquitted on re-trial, so i would guess that perhaps he's been released based on an error the police made. Either way I had no idea that these sexual risk orders existed. They seem a bit draconian considering you don't even have to be convicted, or indeed go to trial to be subject to one.

That's the hot new concept in British justice that also underlies ASBOs and Terrorist Protection Orders or whatever they're called. You can be subject to all sorts of restrictions. If you violate them it's off to jail with you even though you've never even been charged witha crime.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 10:25

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

blowfish posted:

America might not actually destroy the world over the end of the UK. The UK must be able to kick off the destruction of our world itself.

Pretty much. It boosts the deterrent value, basically, if we can drag the US into hell along with us, because then they'll drag everyone else in too.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 20:19

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/23/hidden-costs-facing-generation-rent

quote:

A new sitcom began on Channel 4 this month about a group of young people who are forced to live together because they can�t afford to pay sky-high rents for their own places.

Crashing has been described as the comic voice of generation rent but, out in the real world, the joke has worn thin as tenants are hit with increasingly ridiculous demands for cash to secure properties in a highly competitive housing market.

Now, in a development that not even the most imaginative scriptwriter could have foreseen, tenants in parts of London are being asked to pay �10 to have a friend to stay over, while others claim they are being charged to cook or to wash clothes in their own home. Even before they get to the point of moving in, the same tenants are being charged more than �100 just to see a list of properties.

Traditional letting agents are not allowed to charge tenants for registering or seeing a list of properties if they charge the landlord too, but companies such as EasyLets UK, Spacelet and Flatland are �relocation� or �appointment-making agents�. Instead of receiving payment from the landlords whose homes they market, they charge would-be tenants upfront fees. And now, it seems, the landlords are adding on more charges.

University graduate Gloria Orphanidou, from Cyprus, has been trying to find a cheap room to rent in the capital since December. She paid West End �relocation agent� EasyLets �110 to find accommodation within her �500-a-month budget after seeing properties listed by the agents on Rightmove.

She was told bills were included in the advertised rents but, when she approached the landlords on the list, one told her she would be charged a fee every time she cooked a meal or did her laundry. �The other two were properties living with landlords, where I was not allowed to have any visitors unless I paid them �10 every time someone came to see me,� she said.

Tactics like these appear to be par for the course now in a rental market becoming increasingly competitive and ever more expensive. The latest letting figures, released on 15 January by estate agents Your Move and Reeds Rains, revealed that rents in England and Wales rose by 3.4% in 2015, driving the cost of homes to record levels in some regions. The largest increase over the year was in the east of England, where rents rose by 7.8% to an average of �831 a month, while in London a 6.3% rise took the average to �1,251.

Demand for rented property has been booming as would-be first-time buyers are priced out of that market, while estate agents in London�s most expensive neighbourhoods have reported a rise in the number of wealthy people opting to rent rather than buy in the wake of stamp duty rises.

Last week a flat that was marketed as the cheapest in London sold for �79,000. Despite measuring just 75 square feet, it had 36 viewings and nine offers. The owner plans to rent it out for part of the year � at �1,000 a month.

Meanwhile, �flatmating� � speed dating with a key thrown in � is soaring in popularity, as is property guardianship � looking after a property for an investor by �sitting� it, as depicted in Crashing.

Orphanidou returned to EasyLets to complain that all the rooms she had been shown were unsuitable, but she was refused a refund of the �110 fee. �I felt so stupid and angry at myself. I am broke enough as it is, with just enough money to pay rent for a cheap room, and I had wasted �110 on an agent who clearly doesn�t care and won�t help me find a house,� she said.

In response to inquiries by the Observer, EasyLets forwarded 16 text messages from satisfied customers who had found a room via the service. �Please mention in your article the few people who text me and thank me for my help,� said EasyLets UK director David Funaro in another text to the Observer. �I did find a place for Gloria with permission to have her boyfriend over on the weekend and pay �10 for the night he would stay to the landlord and she even liked the room.�

Housing lawyer Giles Peaker of Anthony Gold Solicitors describes the �10 guest fee as �dreadful� and says the contract term could be deemed unfair and therefore unenforceable.

Dan Wilson Craw, policy officer at Generation Rent, said: �Paying an upfront fee before seeing a single property, let alone agreeing a tenancy, is full of risk. To learn that you might then be asked to pay extra for everyday behaviour like having a partner stay over or cooking a meal is shocking.�

An unregulated market is the best for consumers. Simples.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 12:38

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

StoneOfShame posted:

What is the most Correct sport?

Its hurling though gaelic football, rugby, cricket and snooker are all good to

Starcraft teaches that victory is impossible without control of the means of (unit) production.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 11:49

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

ronya posted:

Why does the UK need to be agriculturally self-sufficient? Is it particularly efficient to grow crops in East England, as compared to the massive breadbaskets of the continent?

If there's another European war at some point between now and the extinction of the human race we would lose access to said breadbaskets. Not that likely, maybe, but potentially catastrophic if it does happen.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 11:53

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Lord of the Llamas posted:

What is this claim that the UK "can't" really based on? I admit some things would become seasonal but it seems to me that it's more that we "don't want" to be more self sufficient as a nation rather than "can't". Not that I think there's anything really wrong with it, I'm not an isolationist after all.

Modelling and studies like the ones described here:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...r05KNLQHHnZQUeQ

I'd be interested to know if that took into account second order effects like fertiliser production. The Haber process consumes about 5% of the world's natural gas (yes we're literally dependent on fossil fuels to eat) and I have no idea what the UK's production capacity is like.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 11:59

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

All anime is terrible

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 12:26

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:

Murdoch has laid into Cameron on twitter over the Google deal. I know we won't get any pro-Corbyn press out of this but hopefully we'll get a few anti-Cameron headlines out of it.

This is literally only because he hates Google for stealing all the advertising dollars and for aggregating his content. It's got nothing to do with disliking tax avoidance and everything to do with wanting a business rival to get a kicking

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 21:14

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

I don't get this feminist transphobia thing, on a fairly deep level. You'd think if you were part of a movement that tried to get a repressed and ridiculed part of the population taken seriously, and endured barbs and criticism and repression and mockery and all the rest of it for decades, you might have the teeniest bit of sympathy with another marginalised group going through the same thing. But nope, it's just FYGM and let's pull that ladder up. People are lovely, even people who know what it's like to be on the receiving end of poo poo and who you might assume wouldn't turn round and start flinging it as soon as they get what they want*. But nope. Still lovely. Everyone is lovely.

*Or at least who start to make progress

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 15:00

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Guavanaut posted:

I think the core of it is that there was a school of thought in second-wave feminism that gender was a wholly social construct and sex was absolutely biological. So you couldn't actually be 'trans'. You could be a woman who wears men's clothes and gets a man's job and goes by a man's name and crops her hair and that's great, you're challenging patriarchy, but you're still a woman from a sex perspective.
Similarly you could be a man who wears women's clothes and transitions etc. but you're still a man.

This is like a Mirror Universe version of biotruths, though. "This elaborate theoretical construct I invented tells me that your direct experience of life is totally invalid! So let me sit you down and femisplain to you that you can't *actually* be transgender, and furthermore..."

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 15:41

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Oh dear me posted:

There's no difficulty in acknowledging gender dysphoria, as far I know. The disagreement is if people insist on a particular essentialist understanding of the cause of that, i.e. that someone "has a woman's brain in a man's body", which implies a notion of innate brain sex differences. Someone insisting on that is actually telling women about their brains, I don't think you can put the blame on them for rejecting it.

Surely he or she is telling someone about their brain, not somehow trying to speak for all 3.5 billion women in the world?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 15:55

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Zephro posted:

Surely he or she is telling someone about their brain, not somehow trying to speak for all 3.5 billion women in the world?

To put the point more strongly, who cares if there are or aren't innate differences between men and women's brains? There are definitely innate differences in the brains of people with Down's syndrome and people without it. That doesn't mean people with Down's syndrome deserve to be treated badly because of it. You treat people well despite whatever differences they have from you. The ethical basis of feminism shouldn't be "women and men are exactly the same", it should be "you treat people well because they're people."

edit: nm, misread RR's post.

Zephro fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jan 29, 2016

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 15:58

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

hookerbot 5000 posted:

I think it doesn't help as well that there is no real definition of what is a man or a woman. I am a woman but I can't say what makes me one if you discount the physical characteristics. It is just what I am and I expect a lot of the population feel the same about their assigned gender. This doesn't mean I doubt the experience of trans people or anything - there's tons of stuff we don't understand and are happy to accept.

I don't see why it has to matter, though. Surely the ethical core of feminism shouldn't be "women and men are exactly the same" or any similar notion, it should be "don't be a dick to sentient creatures / don't cause unnecessary suffering" which handily covers other oppressed groups like trans people, as well as even more infrequent cases like people who self-identify as androgynous, or have hermaphroditic characteristics, who exist as brains in vats, or who are sentient computer programs or aliens from a species with three sexes or whatever exotic scenario anyone can concoct.

Zephro fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 29, 2016

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:25

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

JFairfax posted:

It's like if I as a white british person went to the black ghettos in america and patronisingly told them our experiences are the same because I am now an immigrant in their country, a minority and suffer oppression because I am not an american citizen. They'd probably tell me to jog the gently caress on.

Surely it's more like if an Australian aboriginal went to a black ghetto in America and asked for support in their struggles at home and got told to gently caress off because they aren't a proper black person?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:36

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

It seems to me like half the problem here is a surfeit of "theory" based entirely on handwaving (because we do not understand the biology of gender/sex in any comprehensive way and we know the very next thing to nothing about embryonic brain development). All this armchair theorising gets in the way of the fundamental imperative to not be dicks to other people.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:39

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

I mean if the entire ethical framework underlying your liberation struggle would be demolished by the discovery of a CNS-related gene that was expressed in XX blastocysts but not XY blastocysts then maybe your ethical framework is bad?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:43

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

Oh dear me posted:

The opponents of feminism have always used biological differences as an argument to justify different treatment of men and women (treatment they frequently insist is for the benefit of all); they will use any claimed differences in this way. Feminists have to be prepared to counter such arguments, and their usual reply has been 'your claim about innate sex differences has no good scientific basis'. I don't think they should abandon that one until a good scientific basis is found.

Actually if it leads them to oppress and mistreat trans people then I think maybe they should. Especially since it isn't necessary, involves fighting on your opponent's ground, and is counterproductive because it's a huge hostage to fortune if anyone does find an unambiguous developmental difference between the nervous systems of XX and XY embryos, regardless of how insignificant it is.

Feminism shouldn't respond to lovely arguments with lovely arguments of its own that accept the underlying premise that the details of protein synthesis are relevant to your worth as a sentient being.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:49

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

JFairfax posted:

it's why germane greer has a point

germane's point is germane

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 18:04

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

UKMT February: I don't wanna leave.EU, baby

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 12:04

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:47

Zephro: Nov 23, 2000; I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...

The sun rising tomorrow morning would expose the weaknesses of Jeremy Corbyn

ursine quadrupeds defecating in areas of high lignin concentration would expose the weakness of Jeremy Corbyn

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 14:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT January and a bit of February 2016: Marxist Theory and Danczuk Memes