There’s a fine line between celebrating the history of your ancestors and performative cultural appropriation. Being interested in ones ancestors is one thing - swearing that you’re ‘fiery’ because of your Irish ancestry when you’re 3 or 4 generations removed from that ancestry is a bit weird at best.

I think the US does have a culture all its own - some of the world’s best authors, musicians, artists etc are from the US. It does puzzle me that some US folks are so desperate to claim deep cultural ties elsewhere when they have a pretty good culture already, formed in part from those ancestors.

• Twin Peaks
• The X-Files
• Dark
• Chernobyl
• Happy Valley
• Line of Duty
• Luther
• Spaced
• Wolf Hall
• True Detective S1, S4

I find posts/headlines like these genuinely bizarre. “Now be plainly said”? “hard to picture the specifics”? “Less hypothetical by the week”? I’m not American, I don’t live there but even I can see - and have always been able to see - that its been on his agenda since day 1, that he doesn’t care - and never did care - about how it looks or how it works, that its never, ever been hypothetical.

I don’t make any claim to a superior level of intelligence, I’m not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the US political system but surely this has been utterly obvious to literally everyone since 2016. How many times does this man need to subvert political processes - which has also been happening since 2016 - before US citizens realise that democracy there is gone as a political system? All the various points along the last 10 years I’ve heard US citizens say “well, OK, thats bad, but at least he can’t do this thing” - and then he does it and they say “wow yeah, thats terrible but at least he’s not done the other thing.” repeat unto infinity.

He doesn’t care about head-shaking sombre articles from left-leaning media, he doesn’t care about No Kings marches. He doesn’t care that judges rule against him, he doesn’t care about violating your constitution. What he cares about is beefing up the military, turning the area around the Whitehouse into a heavily armoured, protected zone and creating distraction after distraction after distraction for US left wing political podcasters to froth about in Instagram Reels. Whilst you’re all laughing at his propensity to shit his pants and fall asleep and make rambling speeches, he’s preparing his likely combat zones and mass detention centres/camps.

Yes the US army historically has performed superbly against countries they deemed small easily beaten opponents.

Phone, no. Second hand Kobo + calibre, yes.

Much as I love physical books, I’ve now reached an age where having the ability to increase font size, adjust margins, kerning and leading is invaluable.

That’s giving it to them straight - like pear cider that made from 100% pears.

I’m sure they’ll get right on that, given how law-abiding they are.

From the article:

“Britain’s seventh-richest man, who vocally backed Brexit then moved to Monaco, also hits out at people on benefits”

because of course he does.

https://filen.io/

Not pricey, e2ee clients, open source, servers in Germany, 10gb free tier to try them out. Been using them for a few years now. The clients used to be a bit crap but they’re very good now.

No doubt. But the time correlation (and yes, I know correlation does not automatically equate to causation) together with the direct consequences it would have on trans kids seems much more suggestive of the withdrawal of care playing a role than COVID.

You’re right that I was wrong that it was Wes Streeting who was warned - got my dates muddled - but it was him as then leader of DoH who commissioned and then downplayed the report into the surge in suicides. It was him and his dept who tried to block various FOI requests. They knew.

Not sure how you come to the conclusion this is COVID related though.

Wes Streeting DoH et al were warned suicide numbers would surge if they did it. They ignored the warning and did it anyway. Suicide numbers did then surge. Streeting et al called the reporting on the surge irresponsible and wrong and denied it all. Now this FOI shows the carnage. Carnage that is most likely as this stage under-reported.

And nothing will change because to the Wes Streeting’s of this world - and sadly a lot of the UK general public - there’s a difference between dead kids and dead trans kids.

No. They all want to lead, no one seems to want to build it. But to be fair, some of the points the article makes about the Greens - especially the lack of grass-roots organising - are not wrong.

We’re about a week away from him adopting the title Emperor.