UKMT September 2019 - A Fish-Abandoning Government

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT September 2019 - A Fish-Abandoning Government

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Borrovan posted:

So it's not like the process requires us asking => them agreeing, but they can't unilaterally extend the period. They can just say "yeh we're all cool with extending it, up to u guys" though

Which to me sounds like the best position they can be in really, from a PR perspective. It's not the EU saying "We've extended the deadline" and Boris going "Don't care!", it's just the EU giving Boris the option of extending it - putting it entirely in his court. Not that it's gonna do much in the UK, but it's probably useful to be able to loudly declare to every EU citizen that the EU never pushed the UK out, and that everything that happened is the fault of Boris/the Brits.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2019 12:14

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:18

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jose posted:

loving liberals

https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/st...ingawful.com%2F

I half-jokingly posted that the Western mainstream approach to our current environmental crisis in 2039 would be celebrating it because it kills foreigners (on the right), and calls for environmentalist intervention on the "left". I can only assume someone saw that post and decided to get ahead of the curve and make environmentalist intervention mainstream right away.

OwlFancier posted:

As far as I am aware, the UK sells buildings in London that nobody lives in to Russians who never visit and then sends the money to China and Poland to buy cheap tat and food.

It's not only Russians. The LEGO family is doing its best to restore the Danelaw, taking over as much of London as possible to extract the wealth of the common Englishmen through landlordism.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2019 12:35

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Rust Martialis posted:

If he's complaining about learning Danish, I do have sympathy

He's learning the language of our evil twins, the Dutch.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2019 16:18

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Bobstar posted:

I managed to learn Dutch since living here. Danish is just moon-language throat-singing.

No one said being good was easy.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2019 16:34

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Rust Martialis posted:

Do they murder words too like the Danes:

- r is more like a h
- t is frequently an l

That doesn't sound right to me.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2019 18:18

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Rust Martialis posted:

Badværelset

OK, I'll concede the r->h thing.

Jose posted:

Wasn't basically everyone calling for immediate enactment of article 50 not just Corbyn?

He seduced them with his Brexual magnetism.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 08:56

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Pochoclo posted:

I mean it�s like saying that the murder of Franz Ferdinand is what caused WW1 except even dumber

Wilhelm Stift caused WW1 by investing in the company that build the car Franz Ferdinand rode in on his final day.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 09:05

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

I like to think the Butterfly Effect requires a butterfly to be part of the explanation (like in that pratchett puzzle game discussed not long ago).

There was no Butterfly Effect. WW1 was a direct and immediately apparent outcome of Willy's decision to invest in cars. Just like the parliamentary fight will lead directly to Corbyn's Far Left Brexit Holocaust.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 09:45

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

this stuff is positioning to increase pressure on uk cabinet. the idea france'd veto a request for brexit delay supported by ireland is nonsense

I'd assume it was to increase pressure on Parliament, given that it's the entity that's actually dragging the whole thing out. Like, even the remainer parts of the UK do not really seem to respect the idea that the EU has a stake in this too - they still seem to treat it as an internal affair, with the EU just accepting any extension automatically. Obviously the Irish are pretty supportive of that position, but I'm not sure it's gonna win out forever.

In any case, if Macron really wanted to apply pressure though he'd push through a law that'd force him to veto further extensions beyond the proposed January deadline, just so no one would assume he was bluffing. Then the British parliament could make an automatic revocation law to prevent No Deal, then spend the remaining time voting for May's deal.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 11:33

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Fair enough, parliament's probably the main UK intended audience.

I think this strongman stuff plays more in the context of EU power dynamics also. In the EU27, France is certainly seen as having legitimate interest in how brexit's done, with the geography and infrastructure and trade stuff and everything, and from that perspective, Macron's hard line can be defended as him defending France's legitimate interests: no UK change in position, no point in more talks etc.

However, France's interests won't get anywhere as much support as Ireland's. Most EU states are tiny and brexit's driving worries among small countries that Germany and France will just roll over their interests, since the UK's been seen as a counterweight to that. Vetos work both ways and unless brexit is the end of Macron's EU ambitions, he can't be the one responsible for building walls on their island.

...and while this sounds like it might undercut Macron's brexit rhetoric, it can work the other way. No matter hard and uncompromising he is on brexit, he'll always be able to safely retreat, citing his country's respect and support for Ireland's sovereignty. He'd even be able to frame it as a sacrifice on his part in favour of EU priorities, and cash it in when next there's some big thingy being talked about

Legitimately all good points here. Strange that I didn't consider the counterweight bit, given that that's been the constant of my own country's entire membership and we only joined in the first place because the UK did.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 12:57

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Andrast posted:

But like, going after individual landlords is really pointless. When someone inherits an apartment or something, them selling it instead of renting it out will not improve society one bit. For actual change to happen you need stuff like rent controls, widely available public housing or you know, socialism.

If you make people pay rent above upkeep, you're extorting them. The fact that this is how society functions does not absolve you of your guilt, as clearly the lives of the particular people you have power over are very likely made significantly worse by you.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 17:37

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Ms Adequate posted:

Or just moving things more towards small towns and small cities so more people live in places of like 30,000-100,000 and fewer in multi-million-people metropolises?

We'd probably destroy the last remaining wilderness doing that. The more centralized humanity is, the more chances all the species we share the world have to thrive.

StarkingBarfish posted:

Corbusier wasn't so bad really- he was keen on the idea that you use the high density housing to create open communal spaces between, which if done well means you don't get urban sprawl- the parkland is for everyone. He was an 'urban planner' more than just an architect. The problem is that to a property developer this kind of housing was seen as a way to pack more money in per square meter of ground space, and the parks didn't get a look in.

I'd be all for high density housing if it meant you could surround each building with fields, parkland and public spaces. That's the luxury communism bit.

This doesn't work out well in practice, at least at the scale of Corbusier and his contemporaries. The spaces become too vast, making them feel unsafe, in a way that actual open fields don't.

A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Sep 8, 2019

# ¿ Sep 8, 2019 19:55

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Flipswitch posted:

I am probably gonna sound like a massive square but what's the appeal of lock picking? Is it just the challenge, like a puzzle?

Means you never have to remember your keys.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2019 05:49

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

OwlFancier posted:

Parliament could vote confidence in another PM, I think.

Can...can they make the Queen PM?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2019 13:10

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jedit posted:

If the Queen tried it.

She's the compromise caretaker PM liberals are crying out for.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2019 13:16

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

coffeetable posted:

the other side of being speaker is you aren't ever gonna be prime minister, so none of the MPs you see in the press are gonna go for it

But what if you have already been prime minister? May is an obvious pro-parliament choice, ready to destroy any prime minister who might mock her own legacy by achieving anything at all.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2019 16:18

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

BizarroAzrael posted:

Can Corbyn table a VONC when Parliament is back and form a government to request an extension, or does the time not allow it? Is it he gets 2 weeks or it takes 2 weeks?

Like someone else said, the Queen's Speech is effectively a VONC, and ~~will~~ should happen automatically when Parliament returns.

Failed Imagineer posted:

AOF may be the only mentally-ill person alive who could benefit from reading Zizek

I really want AOF to be as aggressively Zizek in the future as he's an aggressively depressed fascist today. A semi-nomadic Zizek is just what D&D needs.

StarkingBarfish posted:

Who are the 11% of Libdem voters who want BoJo to deliver maximum illegal brexit?

Maximum illegal Brexit --> Political chaos --> Yellow wave sweeps Britain

# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 12:41

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jose posted:

Lol cool

https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1171388014519619586?s=19

EU: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for European children"
Brexiteers: "Europeans? Children?" :barf:

suck my woke dick posted:

BLUT UND BODEN!

Also, since we won't solve climate change before half of the 3rd world sinks into the sea, we might as well create a commissioner for making the idea of building the Trumpwall (but on the Mediterranean coast) more palatable.

We're not gonna build a wall, we're gonna drop anthrax on the North African coast, then blockade the continent till it stops breathing.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 13:01

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Strom Cuzewon posted:

The heptapod language also doesn't work how they say it works. "oh it can't be written linearly, you have to encapsulate all the meaning at once" five minutes before we see Amy Adams writing it linearly.

Not like people haven�t drawn the wrong conclusions before. The statement works if you rewrite it to "oh it can't be understood linearly, because all meaning is encapsulated at once" - the latter of course requiring the understanding that the language causes the speaker to no longer experience time entirely linearly.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2019 06:43

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

OwlFancier posted:

Big batches can help a lot with cooking feeling more rewarding. I made a giant loving pile of welsh cakes following my first attempt at the recipe and have eaten like half a kilo of flour and a whole pack of butter in the past few days cos I've been having them for breakfast and supper It's not more effort to make the same recipe with bigger portions but you get to eat it a lot more.

Yeah, a mainstay of my diet has become Jamaican beef patty stuffing after someone mentioned them in a previous iteration of the thread. The patties themselves could get a bit repetitive, if you had them like all the time, but the stuffing itself can be used a bit more flexibly - the juice can be used to make a savory rice porridge when you actually make a batch, and the stuffing can serve as a fine base for sauces for any kind of pasta really.

I mean, I definitely also did the "half a kilo of flour and a whole pack of butter" thing when I first started making them, but it's not really long-term viable I think - the amount of effort required skyrockets when you have to actually make the dough and stuff the patties.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2019 19:15

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

jaete posted:

Yeah I mean... just the diplomatic damage inflicted already, all that soft power gone, will take like a decade or two to heal. And that's assuming Santa Claus and Easter Bunny team up and cancel Brexit tomorrow, with ~magic~. If they somehow don't, expect worse

It won�t heal. That soft power was the remnant of The Empire, that�s never coming back. The UK will have to build up an entirely new story, like the Germans did after their misadventures.

Hopefully the story of the Jam Union.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2019 06:44

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/SunPolitics/status/1172642731551862787?s=19

Did they not treat Blair nicely?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2019 07:48

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

coffeetable posted:

it's bikeshedding. even on the internet, only a minority of people are happy to offer an opinion on history or politics or current affairs or whatever. whenever someone makes the mistake of bringing up a topic that anybody can offer an opinion on, surprise, people come out of the woodwork to give their two cents

This is why I'm such a great poster; I can offer an opinion on anything. Even/especially things I know nothing about.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2019 22:53

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jose posted:

Who replaced Blair

https://twitter.com/InstituteGC/status/1173193503683371009?s=19

Trying to ingratiate himself with Corbyn, to prevent being sent to the Hague.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2019 14:06

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Ms Adequate posted:

tbf I don't think Blyth sets out to make any statements about "ought", he's entirely concerned with explaining what he sees as "is" and "will be". And in that lens his analysis is coherent; the global north won't give two shits if half of Bangladesh sinks into the Bay of Bengal and Africa undergoes massive desertification, but when the flood waters start doing real and lasting damage in London and New York gets flattened by a hurricane then we'll start seeing real changes even within the capitalist system.

I mean I don't think that's entirely plausible on its own merits because Katrina and Michael and Florence sure don't seem to have done that and major American cities have been practically wiped out, and it certainly doesn't mean capitalism would succeed in its attempts.

What American cities have been "practically wiped out"? Katrina was basically used as tool of gentrification, which is like the opposite of what you want if you want capitalists to do anything positive to combat climate change. Pretty sure Blyth is talking about having to actually write off a major city as just lost, causing a cascade of bankruptcies that directly affect the portfolios of rich people due to both the direct effects as well as the devaluation of other at-risk cities.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 19:24

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Ms Adequate posted:

Okay I may have exaggerated a touch but New Orleans' population was halved, almost 2000 people died, 80% of the city flooded, and I can find damage figures anywhere from $70billion to $160bil. It could be worse but I'm not sure that a city hit that hard and not prompting a response beyond Congress going "how can we blame the army corps of engineering" bodes well for future changes in course. Capitalism found a way to turn that to its advantage instead of having to pay higher taxes to deal with climate change; the fact New Orleans got gentrified is exactly why I don't think his arguments about what capitalism will do are entirely credible.

The population is only 15% smaller now than before Katrina, the city really wasn't that badly hurt. Some of the people, sure, but that's not what counts. A city being written off means abandoning it, like Chernobyl.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 19:56

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

i am harry posted:

What the hell? Have you been to NOLA? Pre-Katrina the entire french quarter would have people walking around in at night, every night. Now it's only lively on the weekends. Everyone who worked downtown in those service industry jobs used to live three blocks north of Rampart or in the Lower Ninth. Now, because out-of-town white money came in and bought up loads of the homes that were underwater for weeks, they live in loving New Orleans East which takes 45 minutes to drive from on a good day.. It's totally unsustainable..nothing but service industry will ever exist in the city.

I meant from the perspective of capital. If you took a city and replaced all the people while the original inhabitants died in a ditch somewhere, capital wouldn't even notice.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 20:25

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Pesky Splinter posted:

https://twitter.com/tpgcolson/status/1173910067185356801

Liz Truss' magic umbrella manifests British weather wherever she opens it.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 20:28

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

OwlFancier posted:

But if you believe that then the actually relevant question is "what do you do about it?" and if you don't believe that improvements can be self generated, that democracy will generally lead people towards better outcomes, then what do you suggest?

You seem to be equating democracy 100% with anarchism here?

OwlFancier posted:

My position is that the removal of structures which encourage and facilitate the exploitation of other people is the most desirable course of action regardless of what you believe about human nature, because either it will minimise the ability of its inherent maliciousness to express itself, or it will liberate us from having that malice socialized into us.

Neither you nor the resident ppe idiot have managed to formulate a coherent critique of that, in his case possibly because he can't formualte a coherent post on anything.

I agree that those structures reinforce lovely attitudes in people, but lovely people came before the structures. How do you prevent those structures from reforming?

# ¿ Sep 22, 2019 20:19

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CoolCab posted:

this is really disingenuous - i mean we are known for our heavily eurosceptic stance, for the exceedingly compelling reason the EU genuinely is awful. one of the ways in which it is awful is how it makes it insanely punitive to leave.

The EU doesn't make it insanely punitive to leave. The punitive nature is literally just losing the upsides of membership, which will naturally be quite harsh after almost a century of economic integration and the outsourcing of your trade delegations. The actual punitive poo poo is directed at weak EU members.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2019 21:24

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:18

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

OwlFancier posted:

Half century is more correct for the UK isn't it? Discounting euro coal board or whatever it was that came before.

Yeah, I forgot the word "half" when I reworded five decades to half a century.

CoolCab posted:

perhaps we have different definitions of "makes"

The words punitive and makes make it seem intentional. It's like saying saying airlines make it insanely punitive to leave the plane mid flight.

feedmegin posted:

Uhhh the EU didn't originate in the 1920s. If it had history might be VERY different.

You forgot that Brexit has been going on for about 50 years.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2019 21:48

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