Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

"Alexa, but with empathy." 🙄
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68165762

Meanwhile, somewhere the data centre that hosts this nonsense is guzzling up precious water and energy that could be used for much better purposes.

Why are humans so incredibly dumb..?

A close look at the law and policy of holding a Northern Ireland border poll

How the law carefully shapes what will be an essentially political decision

New detailed post by me

https://emptycity.substack.com/p/a-close-look-at-the-law-and-policy

Why have young people turned away from the #Tories?

John Burn-Murdoch (FT) suggests (not implausibly) that two factors loom large:

1. the #housingcrsis & the increased difficulty the young have owning their own home;

2. #Brexit

which also goes some way to explaining while the abandonment of the right by the young is more extreme in the Uk than elsewhere (even it is a broad global trend).

the right-wing gerontocracy may have gone too far & taken too much?

Permit me to suggest the claim on Wikipedia that His Majesty's Airship Number One "provided valuable technical experience for British airship designers" is an overly sunny assessment of the featured predicament.

#FailureFriday

I just would like to point out that
none of the accounts I was forced to create for job applications so far had any options for multi-factor authentication or for deleting the account.

And all of the accounts I was forced
to create for job applications so far required to enter very sensitive information that was completely unnecessary to require.

Don’t. Do. This.
Please. Stop.

#JobSearch #Recruiters #Privacy

Today I'd like to discuss the Biden administration rigging the Super Bowl in favor of a midwestern team with a racist name whose owner has given tens of thousands of dollars to Trump Republicans who deny Biden won the 2020 election https://skepchick.org/2024/02/a-word-about-the-taylor-swift-super-bowl-conspiracy-theory/

Republicans believe they don’t have to accept difference and compromise, regarding it as their prerogative to shape the nation in their image, to define the boundaries of “real America.”
 
If they don’t get to rule, they might as well ruin what they no longer regard as “America.”
 
New piece:
 
🧵1/
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/domination-or-dissolution-rule-or

There is no question that Republicans will institute a nation-wide abortion ban the minute they get the chance. And the idea that they would restrict their crusade against trans people, who they have demonized as an acute threat to the “natural” order, to just red states is preposterous.
 
More here:
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/domination-or-dissolution-rule-or

The planet’s got 99 problems, but exponential growth isn’t one

If Christmas is (alas) a time for a materialist blowout, January is often a time for rueful reflection. Should we really have bought all that soon-to-be-landfill for each other? The answer, as I have written a dozen times, is . . . probably not.

Thankfully, people have stopped sending me emails decla

https://timharford.com/2024/02/the-planets-got-99-problems-but-exponential-growth-isnt-one/

#UndercoverEconomist

Not content with the raft of Orwellian laws it’s already enacted, the Government is now expanding its anti-democratic crackdown to further attack the right to peaceful protest. This is a Government hellbent on the erosion of our most fundamental civil liberties.

🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/CarolineLucas/status/1755516157908418956#m

[2024-02-08 08:57 UTC]

There are multiple American journalists imprisoned in Russia for carrying out the real job of being a journalist. And while they are wrongfully detained on decades long prison sentences, Tucker Carlson offers The Kremlin to interview Vladimir Putin, ask the questions Putin wants to hear, and branding this as “journalism” to the American people.

And Elon Musk is hosting it, trying to make money on Putin’s propaganda.

I really hope these two shameless grifters experience a serious case of karma.

The thing most people don't remember about Prometheus is that humans already had fire, but then Zeus locked it up behind a paywall, because Zeus was a petty little bitch. Prometheus stole it *back*. In this essay about DRM I will

@ChrisMayLA6 I imagine someone has done a cost benefit analysis on the expense of changing monarch (again) and the cost of keeping him alive and found that it will help the NHS if he queue jumps.

“Just as the German army did, Republicans bet on what they thought was a malleable figurehead who would shower money on the plutocracy, shovel resources to the military and bust the unions. In both cases, they mostly got what they wanted. But in both cases, they also failed to foresee that their intended stooge would not only break free of their control but exert such total domination as to reduce them to cringing toadies forever protesting their loyalty.”

How Donald Trump reduced the GOP to groveling sycophants | Salon.com

https://www.salon.com/2024/02/04/how-donald-reduced-the-to-groveling-sycophants/

The idea in this paper is that wings could have evolved to flush camouflaged or otherwise-concealed insects into flying up and revealing their presence. Some modern birds do this.

(Images from Macaulay Library, via Park et al 2024)