When the trailer for #TheRegime came out, it seemed to be a fairly serious drama, but early reviews from bamboozled Americans indicated that it might be more along the lines of "Death of Stalin" or that Peter Sellers classic "The Mouse that Roared".
2 episodes in and chuckling all the way through. Fantastic costume and production design, and wrapped in an Eastern European shawl by Alexandre Desplat.
https://youtu.be/MilyCJRKX80
Yay, new episode of #Map Men! Undiscovering the world - in the age of satellite photography, we now know some islands on maps don't actually exist.
https://youtu.be/PVemGumEEgo
Archvied here:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924032565990/mode/2up
Appears to be a comedic rant about capitalism and industrialisation, with some excellent engravings throughout (yes, it's *that* Eric Gill).
"Yes, until after men had toiled through collisions, accidents and confusions they did not learn that regulation was necessary ; even now the regulations they have reached are not uniform ! It is impossible to estimate the number of lives which would have been saved, and the trouble which would have been avoided, had the rulers arrived at a theoretical system to be enforced early enough."
This sounds very familiar!
Sorry for the rant, but everything this government have touched they've ruined. We have foodbanks, record NHS waiting, unis facing bankrupcy. No policy successes to point to after a decade, including and especially from their flagship policies. All they have left is desperate bids to be divisive.
It's Professor Snyder. Listen to facts and wisdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mId4LefqBck
Today, we filed our final brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library. For four years we've been fighting for library rights—what our founder, @brewsterkahle, calls “a battle for the soul of libraries in the digital age.” https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/
Congrats to the @uclcs #AthenaSwan team who have received Gold Award for the 2024 submission!
So good to see! I was on the assessment team from 2012-2020 (through Bronze and Silver) and since then EDI initiatives have branched out into other areas where we're underrepresented.
Anyone who says "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product" has been suckered in by Big Tech, whose cargo-cult version of markets and the discipline they impose on companies.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it
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Long thread/23
The more *any* platform's stakeholder stands to lose by leaving, the worse the platform can treat them without risking their departure. Thus the beneficent face that tech turn to its most cherished tech workers, and the hierarchy of progressively more-abusive conditions for others - worse for those whose work-visas are tied to their employment, and the very worst treatment for contractors testing the code, writing the documentation, labelling the data or cleaning the toilets.
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Long thread/22
This is the economists' "collective action problem" - a phenomenon with a much better evidentiary basis than the hypothetical, far-fetched "dopamine loop" theory.
To understand whom a platform treats well and whom it abuses, look not to who pays it and who doesn't. Instead, ask yourself: who has the platform managed to lock in?
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Long thread/17
Because *all* capitalists are surveillance capitalists...when they can get away with it. Sure, Apple blocked Facebook from spying on Ios users...and then started illegally, secretly spying on those users and lying about it, in order to target ads to those users:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
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Long thread/16
This theory is great for tech companies: it elevates giving them money to a democracy-preserving virtue. It reframes handing your cash over to a multi-trillion dollar tech monopolist as good civics. It's easy to see why those tech giants would like that story, but boy, are you a sap if you buy it.
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Thoroughly enjoying this BBC4 #PetShopBoys retrospective. All the hits, from Glastonbury, TotP etc. and lots of factoids I didn't know.
Rishi Sunak to strip GPs of right to sign people off sick
GPs face being stripped of the right to issue sick notes, as the prime minister says doctors are too readily writing people off as unfit for work. Specialist teams linked to the benefits system will instead assess the sick and decide how best to keep them in work.
Be afraid, very afraid. Those will be the same private companies who have already stripped benefits with no due concern.
#ToryCorruption #Disability
Just another worried little citizen of this modern-day Pompeii. Techie at UCL, working on Process Automation with MS Power Platform. Scatterbrain, interested in education, languages, Space and lots of disparate things. sorry.
Keeping my space toots at @astrodad as an experiment in self-moderation :)
*Background banner is a photo Yorkshire flag in blue and white, in front of a classic bell tent, in a field of similar tents at a festival.