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This thread is wrong while negotiations in May are still ongoing.
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Jun 1, 2020 13:02
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OwlFancier posted:Who the gently caress is bez he looks like pound shop bruce forsyth. 
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Jun 1, 2020 13:11
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A tiny bit of unfinished business from the last thread - I was struggling to remember the name of the American bluetick who managed to perfectly encapsulate two hard-and-fast rules of the universe: https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1267060056203427840 - Anyone with a cartoon of themselves as their avatar is a twat - Any portrait with the subject's hands visible is the mark of a dickhead
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Jun 1, 2020 13:18
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jabby posted:Replying from the other thread because it's actually an interesting point about how you deal with racist cops. But how do you get there from here? Train up entire new forces then just replace the existing ones? I can't imagine anything getting better for *anyone* in that interim period. Maybe it's just a failure of imagination on my part but I can't see anything (absent a large-scale civil war, or some other massive upheaval to society) that lets you rip apart and remake the system without consequences similar to the fallout from a civil war, at least in the short term. (Comedy option - if we're insisting on getting technology involved in everything, how about instead of cameras, make all cops wear AR goggles that turn everyone into the pastiest of WASPs)
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Jun 1, 2020 18:39
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Guavanaut posted:You can debate how much of an improvement going from the RUC to the PSNI is, but it is an improvement. I started typing something up about this last night but couldn't quite get my meaning across (it's possible I actually posted it, as this isn't normally a barrier) that one of the biggest problems with modern police at least here and in the US is how little actual police work they get up to. They probably spend more time doing front-line social service work than catching criminals although they often deal with the former, as you say, by turning them into the latter - homelessness, for example, should never be a police matter (of course it just shouldn't be a matter at all), but years of gutting social services (and society) have meant that they've been used as a temporary fix for just about all of society's ills. In a perfect world this could actually still work - PCSOs could be trained in basic social work and be that first port of call, even if all they end up as is walking directories of (properly funded, of course) government agencies that could help someone in distress and being the general face of the Old Bill. Using them as warm bodies in high-vis satisfies nobody. Actually the high-vis is part of the problem. I've joked about it in the past but the utility vests and other tacticool bollocks they wear definitely have a big psychic effect on both sides. If nothing else the natural reflex to hook their thumbs in the arm holes *definitely* transforms them into Dickensian beadles. It's also a fundamentally military look, something that breaks the most fundamental principle of (British) policing, that the police are of the people and not an occupying force. Bring back the old uniform, tit-head and all - make the pockets a bit bigger and make the coat out of kevlar and you've got something with as much use as the modern uniform, but maybe will remind everyone that they're not in Fallujah. We sneer (with some justification) at the idea of "bobbies on the beat" but the idea of having a known, familiar face behind the uniform, seen as an everyday thing, not someone swooping in with sound and fury, is a drat good one for all concerned. Get plod back to seeing themselves as part of society, not a power over it (and get people seeing them as the same thing) and you fix a lot of problems. The Peelian principles are, I think, still a very sound basis for the enforcement of civil authority. Whether they can truly be adhered to is another matter, of course. (Sorry, that's still really rambly and unfocused, but tbh I'm getting serious lockdown brain at this point)
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Jun 1, 2020 20:10
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https://twitter.com/inzyrashid/status/1267563875253260288 loving hell.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:52
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You know I joked about it yesterday but is anyone else finding their mental state eroding over the past few months? The combination of no meaningful work and no real incentive to leave the house, leaving me to just consume the internet like a loving baleen whale, has chopped my attention span to basically zero. I've not read a book in weeks - just can't concentrate, I forget the preceding paragraph before I even start the next. Television is just a background noise, if I sit down to try and watch something I instantly pull my phone out and start scrolling. There's a stack of unfinished personal projects, from minor DIY to a novel, staring at me but nope, just gotta quickly refresh Twitter. The last thing of any note I completed was that post about the BT Tower *and I had to check my drafts folder to remember what I posted about*. Now you could advance the theory that the last few weeks have had Happenings at such a fever pitch that it's not surprising that I've ended up in this state but I don't really feel anything about any of it. Murders, mayhem and Jimmy Bollock suddenly coming out on the side of BLM get the same level of shock from me as an own goal from 90s lower-league football. I'd worry about boomer brain, but it's somehow even worse, as I can't even be arsed posting (or even forwarding) for the most part. It feels more like an eating disorder, I just have to keep shoveling it in without any actual enjoyment or disgust or even acknowledgement. I'm exaggerating this all a little bit, but I sort of walked in on myself yesterday with those posts about the police when I re-read them, because they're a pretty incoherent mess when the ideas in my mind were fairly sharp and well-defined, and it's given me the mental equivalent of a toothache that I can't stop prodding, and as I've always said I find just writing this sort of stuff out to be pretty strongly therapeutic on its own. I'm now off for a long walk to get some dog treats - not because I need them, this idiot creature has more food in the house than I do - but because actually having a project to complete and completing it will do my brain and body far more good than wearing my scroll wheel another couple of mms ever will.
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Jun 2, 2020 09:04
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Borrovan posted:It's not just you. I've been in awful mental health*, just tired all the time, sad, unmotivated, stressed, crying a lot, my girlfriend (who doesn't normally have mental health issues) isn't far off, I've heard similar stuff from loads of other people. Seems like the kind of thing that would probably be normal in these kinds of situation if these kinds of situations were themselves halfway normal. Be kind to yourself is about all you can do. I realised just before I set off that at least in my case it's that sneaky fucker depression creeping in with a fake moustache and a slightly different set of symptoms. Of course this realisation let me to come back and  but it's a start.
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Jun 2, 2020 09:20
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Thanks for the kind words and sympathy goons - like I say, I twigged this was my depression finding a new way in, the sneaky bastard, when it realised my usual ways of escaping it are, if not banned any more, still come with a big dose of guilt. I'm sure I've said it before but although I often rant about the worse aspects of this thread, I can't think of a place on the internet more suitable to just unload a bunch of poo poo on so I don't feel like I'm carrying it alone. The dog now has biscuits, which she is happy with, and a thoroughly-cleaned ear, which she is rather less happy with (a labrador, so she gets blocked/infected ears fairly regularly, and cleaning it out is a mutually unpleasant job but only one of us gets treats and belly rubs at the end). I've also ordered this, which ticks a lot of boxes for me - those wooden mechanical model kits are satisfying as hell to put together, it's a weird musical instrument, and if I get it really badly wrong I can just burn the fucker.
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Jun 2, 2020 12:28
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No that's what I do if I get it *right*, and accuse anyone claiming I'm wildly out of tune, meter and even the most basic parameters of what could be called "music" I just tell them they don't understand rock and roll.
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Jun 2, 2020 12:34
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:- not sure if this is something you might be interested in? (is there an easier way of tagging someone without doing an empty quote?) I'll be the first person ever banned from Twitter for a meltdown over the Parker-Morris standards.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:14
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:In a good way or a bad way? I just checked those out and my flat fails 1961 and 1967 versions. (Flat is 26sqm which is below minimum in both sets). I want to nail them to the door of every planning department in the country like a council house Martin Luther. GLA (and some other authorities) now have (non-binding) standards that at first glance look like an improvement on Parker-Morris, but it's not just the outright area that most modern housing fails on (bearing in mind that these were supposed to be *minimums*), it's stuff like window sizes, sound insulation, in-built storage, division between kitchen and living room (a lot of developers combine them to make the living room seem bigger but of course it just means all your furniture ends up stinking of cooking, and also that you have no fire break between the kitchen and the rest of the dwelling), bathroom ventilation, and a thousand other little touches that vastly improve the quality of the living space. While we're at it I'd also make appearance covenants punishable by death. Many poor-door units have specific clauses in their leases/tenancies forbidding the use of outdoor space for anything other than a very narrowly-defined set of uses, normally excluding any form of storage or clothes drying. That's right, you can be thrown out of your home for wanting to air out a towel rather than pissing away money (and carbon emissions) on using a tumble dryer, because they're terrified of the balconies not matching the architects drawings and maybe even forcing a member of the upper classes to gaze upon the underwear of the underclass.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:54
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Danger - Octopus! posted:I'm pretty sure it used to be slang in English didn't it? I'm sure I've read stuff from a couple of centuries ago where it was slang for testicles here. Plums is more common, presumably as a humblebrag thing but also a worry given the colour.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:57
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Guavanaut posted:There's eggs in Deuteronomy and other texts which predate the diaspora, so either Russians stole the eggs from Jews or it's a strange coincidence. The Rus' were trading with the Arab world so it's not impossible they were picking up words along the way (although of course there's a lot of dispute about how much they then influenced what became Russia).
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Jun 2, 2020 17:02
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https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1268263706728767489 Death cult.
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Jun 3, 2020 20:41
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Late to this but the best cop show (that isn't Police Squad!) is Detectives On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Ap8HpmBRc Although admittedly it won't ring anywhere near as strongly with anyone not marinated in The Sweeney and the other shows being ripped to shreds, but Jim Broadbent overacting for Britain and the extremely surreal point that the climax, filmed at South Quay just opposite Canary Wharf, with them lamenting that all of the warehouses full of cardboard boxes for them to drive through were gone, is now almost as unrecognisable to modern eyes with just how fast the area has changed - one of the buildings there has been demolished and a new building put up (the IRA assisted with the first part of that process), then partially demolished again to make way for yet another building, in the 25 years since this was made. My actual serious suggestion for - maybe not best, but certainly most underrated - cop show is The Chinese Detective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy7qrY26QlM Alas not available on Youtube but not hard to find. There's a lot of on-paper detective story cliches - maverick detective disliked by his superiors and his colleagues who gets results, "honest" criminals and bent coppers, even a hip, cool black buddy - but it's all through the rather darker prism of the maverick being the only Chinese-descent detective in the Met (and notably the only minority of any kind in the CID), and although it plays with a lot of racial stereotypes it also makes sure to gently caress them over - David Yip (still, AFAIK, the only Chinese actor to get a leading role in a prime time show on British TV) is fantastic in the title role, a sort of nerdier Columbo who more-or-less annoys people into confessing, also dealing with the second-generation immigrant problem of not really being accepted either by his birth community or by the country he was born in and carefully maneuvering himself closer to the bent copper who had bankrupted his father. It's a hell of a period piece in both the storylines and the actual filming locations (I once went through the whole series and there's only about 6 outside scenes that show buildings still recognisable today) and while the storylines are sometimes a little cookie-cutter, the performances, particularly of Yip but also of the who's who of Cockney character actors that make up the supporting cast, are absolutely amazing.
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Jun 3, 2020 23:33
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Cerv posted:I never watched Humans but doesn't that make Gemma Chan number two? Possibly, I did say as far as I knew. It's possible that there have been others but there really haven't been a lot of east Asian actors on British TV or in films - I guess the box-tickers only bother going down the list as far as south Asian, and just had Burt Kwouk on speed-dial if they needed a representative of a fifth of the world's population.
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Jun 3, 2020 23:59
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Beware Greeks bearing molotovs: https://twitter.com/CerveauxNon/status/1268269513105199104
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Jun 4, 2020 00:02
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communism bitch posted:Just get a snood or something Lead time's a little long (DHL claim mine "Left the Export facility" a week ago, which suggests that they're sending it via dirigible) but ADMIN has you (face) covered 
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Jun 4, 2020 18:22
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Jose posted:£32 including shipping is a bit more than i wanted to spend Get the Saudis to buy it for you.
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Jun 4, 2020 19:28
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Ms Adequate posted:I'm just constantly having the sentence "Did he not listen to a single lyrics?" running through my head obessive-compulsively He's a drummer, so no. Also he hits things with sticks for a living, of course he identifies with cops.
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Jun 4, 2020 19:30
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Maugrim posted:Tories gonna Tory Now I'm not saying the phrenologists are on to something, but whenever there's a headline like that it's *always* accompanied by a head shaped like that.
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Jun 5, 2020 09:24
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Guavanaut posted:Well this is bringing back some strong memories and is definitely not going to take up my whole evening rather than something productive. Cowards do it via telnet, heroes do it on Twitter so everyone sees their fuckups: https://twitter.com/bbcmicrobot e: https://twitter.com/bbcmicrobot/status/1268584757002190853 Cheating to let Cthulu do your coding for you, IMO, but he gets results. goddamnedtwisto fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 18:22
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Trin Tragula posted:In English law you cannot be in possession of something once you've consumed it What about those drugs that don't get metabolised and instead just get pissed out unchanged? Not sure if any of them are psychoactive though.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:28
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In the last 24 hours I wrote my first (useful, as opposed to exercise) Python script and built a hurdy-gurdy, which I think counts as both the most interesting and dullest Saturday I've ever had.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:30
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OwlFancier posted:I really hope sometime in the future pratchett gets a resurgence cos yeah, his stuff is genuinely far more communicative and ahead of its time than most any other comparable works I can think of. I've seen a *lot* of people quoting Night Watch the last couple of days, and even if the overall story is pretty disheartening (Vimes doesn't actually change the world, Keel and the others are still dead at the end and Snapcase is every bit as much of a bastard as Winder), the underlying point that his direct action protected the people there and then, and the general Watch theme that the police are supposed to be protectors not enforcers, are at least a useful treatment for Centrist Brain. What happened to that cyberpunk-y reboot series of Night Watch, anyway?
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Jun 7, 2020 07:55
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https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1269657417308143617
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Jun 7, 2020 17:14
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Jippa posted:It's definitely american. I remember when I first got on the internet I really noticed it (around 9/11 and the freedom fries bollocks). The idea of the French being effete, pleasure-obsessed gadabouts is *way* older than that, and probably dates back to the Norman Conquest if not earlier. The fact these girly-men pretty consistently kicked the poo poo out of the stout yeomen of England for the better part of a millennium (to the point our national legends include the very few times we got a W on them, from Crecy to Waterloo) is conveniently ignored for the most part. Of course the modern legend mostly comes from the capitulation against Germany, which completely ignores the material reasons why they relied so heavily on the Maginot Line and had no possible plan B once that failed, that the BEF also got wiped out in that campaign (again, an abject defeat and retreat is somehow turned into a win in our national legend) and also that a lot of French people continually fought the Germans throughout the occupation and at far higher stakes than the British faced. Acting against that is one of the best lines from one of the very best episodes of The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZUKEVU-TwM (which is from 1995, but for some reason gets caught up in Coalition Of The Willing bollocks from 2002/3)
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Jun 8, 2020 14:57
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thespaceinvader posted:The USA is a wild place when it comes to making drinks with boiling water, because at least in part electric kettles over there suck rear end because of the lower voltage electrical supply. We settled on 240v mains supply *because* we wanted our tea as fast as possible. We keep whole Welsh mountains full of spare volts to make sure that tea is available in sufficient quantities and speed after great national moments like football games and soap operas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA
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Jun 8, 2020 17:11
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forkboy84 posted:If I was less lazy I'd go on that Facebook page & pointed out people hated Churchill in his loving life time. It's not like "Churchill is a divisive figure" is anything but a statement of fact. Churchill was booed out of the East End the one time he visited it during the blitz (highlight line - "You're not on the rations are you, you fat oval office?").
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Jun 8, 2020 21:33
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https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1270090014395977728 The Master Race, ladies and gentlemen! (Also sure glad that the US Gov is going to protect us from all those Antifa)
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Jun 9, 2020 01:37
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https://twitter.com/squires_david/status/1270307692427350016 Prime av material in the latest Squires cartoon. 
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Jun 9, 2020 12:06
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Guavanaut posted:Also very important: despite the name, sounding rockets do not go in the pee hole. Not with that attitude anyway.
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Jun 9, 2020 18:06
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Gossip time, but Natalie Rowe is making noises about revealing who "Mr Twist" from her autobiography is: https://twitter.com/RealNatalieRowe/status/1270402225156866061 https://twitter.com/RealNatalieRowe/status/1270421736027295751 Note that she's done this before, teasing that she'll reveal who he is, but this time she's offered some rather more specific hints (in particular that he's knighted and a media owner rather than just a media figure) than last time that also exclude a couple of the most-guessed suspects from previous teases (including mine), so it's possible that she might be serious this time.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:51
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Lobster God posted:https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1270415086792966146?s=19 Replace it with one of Ted Johns in his vest and braces, IMO. LBTH have been pretty good about commemorating other figures (naming one of their offices after Jack Dash was a particularly nice move and is still successfully trolling Tories 20 years later) but Ted so far hasn't got any more than a plaque.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:59
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Although on chemistry to attack stone statues, you might be able to use thermite on the feet to melt through the stone? That would work on brozne at least, and setting a batch of thermite alight on them could be done by a single person overnight. Thermite *might* get through concrete depending on the exact formulation, but will barely damage any other stone normally used for statues. You also don't really need thermite (which is really pretty dangerous) to attack bronze or any other material when battery-powered grinders are so easily and cheaply available. Erm... in Minecraft.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:16
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feedmegin posted:Given the accuracy of strategic bombing at the time, bombing Auschwitz would have been doing the Nazis' jobs for them. Operation Jericho, the one time they did try and bomb a prison to release the prisoners, was considered a success (and realistically was an absolutely amazing feat with the technology of the day) even though 1 in 7 prisoners died and only 1 in 20 successfully escaped and avoided recapture - and that was in France, with established networks to help get them to safety. Even if they'd had laser-guided bombs to take out the walls and fences around Auschwitz the poor buggers who made it out would have been starving, weak, injured, and in hostile territory. They *might* have been able to take out the railway junction leading to it (it would just have been just at the edge of the range of the Lancaster and B29) but they'd have had to run the gauntlet of the entirety of the German air defences twice for what would probably would have just been an inconvenience to the Nazis and rather more than that for the prisoners.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:08
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gh0stpinballa posted:not for nothing but we are also supporting a genocide in yemen with the intelligence and strategic support we lend saudi arabia. UK special forces train child soldiers there. our operations also enable a thriving human trafficking industry, which includes children being stolen from their families - often by jihadi groups we are arming - and sold into sexual slavery around the world. the blood money all flows back into the City and means london has become effectively a gigantic washing machine for dirty cash made off the rape, torture and murder of people in the global south. i would like to see the conversation emphasise that our crimes are not historical, that more than statues need to be torn down and dismantled here. "become"? The City has been this since at least the 16th century.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:17
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thespaceinvader posted:This. Erm... attacking on command is pretty much what the human/canine relationship is all about. Police dogs (and hunting dogs) loving *love* their work - they don't get strapped down Clockwork Orange style and brainwashed into attacking, if anything most of the training is about ensuring they only attack who the handler wants them to attack.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:23
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gh0stpinballa posted:yeah ofc. it's important to use this moment to broaden the conversation to uk economics and our contemporary role as an imperial power. i think generally the mainstream british left is quite bad at talking about our foreign policy, but we still very much profit from modern slavery, we just have a few more middlemen and a bit more plausible deniability. Fair point. I suppose it gets subsumed into the general anticapitalist stance, but we definitely need to be a lot better about highlighting the way in which both the City and the UK government helps the literal worst people on Earth wash the blood off their money. This is where liberals could actually prove their alleged worth because it should be right in their wheelhouse, but HSBC put a rainbow in their Twitter handle and had an advert with Richard Ayoade that made gammons mad and so that's them safe.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:42
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