theinspectorst

theinspectorst, 24 days ago

Yes, having an election is a normal thing in a democracy.

theinspectorst, 24 days ago

Well of course - publishing the identity of all private donors would be madness.

Small donors should be allowed to donate freely without their name appearing on the internet for all their friends, neighbours, employers, journalists, rabble-rousers, etc to see. Someone donating a few tens or hundred of euros to their local candidate doesn't create a risk of influencing (or appearing to influence) the candidate's political platform; and we should be positively encouraging small donors, as I'd much prefer a political system where politicians relied on many small donations to one where they relied on a handful of millionaire donors.

It's big money donors - the ones stumping up enough money to potentially influence the candidate - that parties should be required to disclose.

theinspectorst, 28 days ago

Now do it with the Discovery bridge crew.

theinspectorst, 28 days ago

If you’re not doing great, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and weather the storm and work to make things sunnier before the next election rather than call for an election amidst the storm?

The latest possible date the election could have been is January 2025, but that was practically very unlikely as i) there is an extremely sharp generational divide in voting intentions (far sharper than in most Western democracies) and January would have meant the Tories having to get their elderly core voters to the polls in the middle of winter, and ii) a January vote would have meant a campaign running over Christmas, and everyone would have punished Sunak for that. The widespread expectation was for an autumn election.

It's unclear why Sunak jumped earlier but likely a combination of various factors:

• them being worried the economy will not get better by the autumn (so avoids going to the polls after a summer of bad economic news);
• going early means their main opponents on the right (Reform) don't have time to get their act together and select candidates in all seats (which they would have done by the autumn);
• their flagship immigration policy is controversial and expensive, yet likely to have an underwhelming impact on illegal immigration levels, and they'll look like complete idiots for centring an autumn election on a 'stop the boats' slogan if there's another summer of small boat arrivals in the meantime; and
• Sunak personally is fed up - he's very much a political child of the far-right (an avowed Brexiter long before Boris Johnson or Liz Truss converted to the cause) yet the far-right of the Tory Party don't see him as one of their own and have been constant thorns in his side throughout his leadership - he may just want out at this stage.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

It's a corrupt convention but it wasn't always the case. An important reform by the 2010-15 coalition government was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which took this incredibly important decision out of the prime minister's partisan hands and have elections on a predictable 5 year cycle (barring the government falling or a supermajority for early elections).

After Boris Johnson won the 2019 election though, he set about dismantling checks and balances such as this. He also changed the electoral system for mayoral elections to First Past the Post (with no consultation or referendum - which the Tories have always insisted was needed to change the electoral system away from FPTP...) because FPTP tends to favour Tories.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

All of our constitutional law takes the form of Acts of Parliament that can be amended or repealed with a 50%+1 vote in Parliament - unlike most countries where the constitution sits above the parliament and changing it requires a supermajority and/or a referendum. Boris had a majority so he could change the constitution. It's a totally messed up system.

One reason British liberals as so passionate about internationalism and the European Union is that international treaties and EU law are some of the few mechanisms we have had for constraining executive overreach, since they sit outside and above Parliament's remit. For example, even if Parliament were to repeal the Human Rights Act, Britain remains a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (which is why some Tories now talk about withdrawing from this too). Without international safeguards external to the UK, in theory all that stands between Britain and despotism is a simple majority vote in Parliament.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

Because the Palestinian children had nothing to do with the killing of Israeli children? What you're describing and explicitly trying to justify here is collective punishment of all of the two million Palestinians in Gaza (more than half of whom are children) for the crimes of (by Israel's estimates) about 3,000 Hamas terrorists on 7 October.

What you're articulating constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention and that's exactly why the ICC is getting involved.

Let me try putting this another way. The population of the US state of Nebraska is about two million. Every year, there are about 6,000 violent crimes committed by Nebraskans. Should every Nebraskan be collectively punished for the crimes of those few thousand Nebraskans?

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

The UK is a society where violent crime is pretty uncommon. The homicide rate in the UK was 1.0 per 100,000 population in 2023. That has been broadly trending downwards in recent decades, after rising during the late 20th century and hitting a peak at c1.8 per 100,000 in 2003. The US is a much more violent society: their homicide rate is around 6.4 per 100,000 population.

Killers are always going to find weapons - if you ban guns they'll find knives, if you ban knives they'll kill with something else. One difference is that a killer on a knife rampage is going to kill a lot fewer people before they're stopped than a killer with a gun. I guess killing with a knife is a more 'involved' act than just pointing a gun and clicking the trigger, so the bar for someone stabbing with a knife is probably a bit higher than killing from several metres away with a gun.

But part of it is a societal thing - my hunch is that (in relative terms) society in the UK and most other rich Western liberal democracies just instills in people an instinctively higher value on human life. You see it in US exceptionalism in use of the death penalty, the frequency of police killings, etc. I don't want to exaggerate the difference - the US still has far fewer murders than Colombia or South Africa or Brazil - but there are other Western countries like Canada or Finland where guns are still pretty widely owned (albeit not quite to the extent of the US) that don't have the same problem of violence as the US.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I'd take our situation any day of the week.

Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

They wouldn't need hundreds of hours of voice recordings to replicate somebody's voice in the 24th century. We don't even really need that today.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

Forth, and fear no darkness.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!

-- Jean-Luc Picard

-- Frank Abatemarco

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

150 duck-sized sycamore trees or 1 sycamore-tree-sized duck?

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

They have duty shifts, each will have an officer in command. In a three-shift system (i.e. where each shift lasts 8 hours), you might have the captain commanding the day shift, the first officer the second shift, and another more junior officer on the night shift. Other times (like when Jellico commanded the Enterprise) there can be a four-shift system. If something important happens when the captain is off duty or asleep then the shift commander can always wake the captain - but the vast majority of the time (i.e. all the days in between episodes, which we never see) then nothing eventful happens during the night shift.

On the Enterprise D, Data often commanded the night shift since he didn't need any sleep, but in principle any officer (even at Lt Junior Grade or Ensign) could be put in command.

I ended reading up a load on this for a Star Trek Adventures game.

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind...

theinspectorst, 1 month ago

I've found it useful for TTRPGs too. Art generators are certainly helpful for character portraits, I also find ChatGPT can be useful for lots of other things. I've had pretty mediocre results trying to get it to generate a whole adventure but if you give it tight enough parameters then it can flesh out content for you - ranging from NPC name ideas, to ideas for custom magic items, to whole sections of dialogue.

You can give it a plot hook you have in mind and ask it to generate ideas for a three-act structure and encounter summary to go with it (helpful when brainstorming the party's next adventure), or you can give it an overview of an encounter you have in mind and ask it to flesh out the encounter - GPT4 is reasonably good at a lot of this, I just wouldn't ask it to go the whole way from start to finish in adventure design as it starts to introduce inconsistencies.

You also need to be ready to take what it gives you as a starting point for editing rather than a finished product. For example, if I ask it to come up with scene descriptions in D&D then it has a disproportionate tendency to come up with things that are 'bioluminescent' - little tells like that which show it's AI generated.

Overall - you can use it as a tool for a busy DM that can free you up to focus on the more important aspects of designing your adventure. But you need to remember it's just a tool, don't think you can outsource the whole thing to it and remember it's only as helpful as how you try to use it.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

I Call Modi 'A Fucking Fascist' Who Would Take India's Freedom, Diversity And Democracy

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

I think he was pretty clearly there with the intent of his presence being antagonistic. He's not just a random Jewish man who coincidentally happened to be walking through the area at that particular time, he's a pro-Israeli activist who was hoping his presence would provoke a reaction as part of an attempt by political partisans to paint mainstream pro-Palestinian protestors as racist.

But - regardless of his intent - if the only reason the Met could point to for them believing his presence might have actually been antagonistic is his ethnicity and his religion, then on the surface he hasn't done anything wrong.

I think this episode should be read in the context of a wide-ranging assault on free speech and the right to protest by the current Conservative government, which is encouraging a pattern of overreach by the Met police in response to legitimate protest.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

Beigel Bake on Brick Lane.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

Hasn't the UK already done this? The French are currently protesting against it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/15/environment-conservation-france-protest-uk-ban-bottom-trawling-fishing-uk-eu-trade-deal-tca

Wait - weirdly it's the same journalist who wrote both articles. How did she manage to write an article two days ago about a UK ban, and then write again yesterday about Greece being the first European country to do this?

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

Greece has become the first country in Europe to announce a ban on bottom trawling in all of its national marine parks and protected areas.

It doesn't say EU, it says Europe. The Guardian is a British newspaper, they know the difference.

Brexit meant Britain left the EU, it didn't literally move Britain to a different continent.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

But ... I thought the 2009 film was an origin story?

It was literally the story of how the Kelvinverse came to exist and it followed Kirk, Spock, McCoy and co from their Academy days.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

He also reprised the character in season 2 of Picard.

I think apart from the Q scenes at the beginning and end, this Easter egg scene (and the punk's post-Spock reaction to being asked to turn down the music again) might be the only salvageable thing from that train wreck of a season.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

James Tiberizzus Kirk.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

That was my thought, I'm quite up for this. I enjoyed The Voyage Home, I enjoyed The Trouble with Tribbles - I wouldn't want all Trek to be like that but there is absolutely a place in the franchise for light-hearted takes on Trek.

theinspectorst, 2 months ago

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Spock died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third movie according to the scriptures:

And that he was seen of Jim, then of the rest of the crew:

-- Roddenberry 15:3-5

theinspectorst, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

eight member states, including Hungary and Italy

Fascists are why we can't have nice things.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

I assume that's the reaction they were going for by expressing the stat in that way, but aside from shock value it isn't that informative.

Child mortality is usually expressed as 'X per 1,000 live births' so you have some sense of scale. We'll never live in a world where zero children die before their 5th birthday (simply because of illnesses and accidents) but expressing the number of deaths per 1,000 gives you a sense of whether the number of deaths is a lot or not.

Here's a UNICEF article that provides some more context on the 4.9 million global figure for under-5 deaths: 'The global under-five mortality rate declined by 60 per cent, from 93 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 37 in 2022.' To add more context on 37 per 1,000: in San Marino that figure is about 1.5, in the United Kingdom it's about 4.1, whereas in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa it remains above 100 deaths per 1,000 live births - which I find to be a frankly much more informative and terrifying way of understanding the number.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

It kills people.

Daylight savings time practices have been linked to increases in deadly traffic accidents, workplace injuries, medical errors and overall mortality.

In 2018, researchers in Spain penned a letter that was published in the journal Epidemiology regarding a link between deadly car accidents and daylight savings shifts. After collecting data from capital cities in Spain between 1990 and 2014, the researchers found a 30% increase in fatal traffic accidents on the day clocks sprang forwards. On the day clocks fell backwards, they saw an increase of 16%.

[...]

One of the serious health concerns related to time shifts is acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Researchers in Italy wrote a 2018 review published in the journal Internal Emergency Medicine investigating daylight savings' potential effects on heart health. They reviewed seven existing studies from the United States and Europe looking at more than 80,000 cases of acute myocardial infarction. They found an increase, from 4% to 29%, in heart attacks after clocks sprang forwards.

Incidence of stroke may also increase after a clock shift. For a 2016 study published in the journal Sleep Medicine, researchers in Finland investigated the connection. They analysed more than 3,000 hospitalizations from 2004 to 2013 that occurred in the week following seasonal clock changes. They next compared those cases to a control group of 11,000 expected hospitalizations. The findings showed that hospitalizations for ischaemic stroke, the most common type, increased by 8% in the two days following a daylight savings shift. When looking at the whole week post-shift, the increase was 3%. The association was stronger for people assigned female at birth and those who were older.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

Oh yeah totally. Sorry, I thought your comment was arguing to retain the switch. Permanent DST is exactly where we should go.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

In general I get that and my instinct was similarly that it was strange not to use the word. I'd use Taoiseach for Varadkar in a way I wouldn't use the native language word for other world leaders, because I think of Ireland as a primarily English-speaking country and that's the word they still use whilst otherwise speaking in English.

But then again, I can also see that British readers like you and I who follow current affairs are going to be a lot more familiar with the term Taoiseach (or, in Calamity Truss's case, the 'Tea Sock') given it's the country next door and so hugely intertwined with British politics. I could name every Taoiseach in the last quarter century just by virtue of how much those individuals have featured in UK news - through the peace process, the financial crisis and then Brexit. I couldn't do that for the leaders of any other foreign country of Ireland's size. So I think it's not unreasonable to assume the average US or other reader might not not know what a Taoiseach is.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

I mean I suppose there are a few ways you could read this.

One is that the NYT article was inaccurate - it wouldn't be the first time that fake news around this conflict has travelled halfway around the world before the truth has had its breakfast.

But another interpretation is that tight-knit communities don't want the full horror of the final moments of these girls and women to be so publicly exposed to the world. The article points out that the NYT article effectively identified the individuals and that can't have been a helpful experience for their surviving families and friends.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

I put in a request to take over a magazine last year when its previous moderator disappeared, and ernest actioned it pretty quickly. It looks like he hasn't posted for a month or so now though - hope he's doing okay. Running this thing must be a hell of a weight to carry.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

There is very little to read into this. Rochdale is an unusual constituency, Galloway is an unusually high profile candidate, there was no official Labour or Green candidate. Still, he failed to even win 40% of the vote yesterday.

This sort of thing is his speciality. He's personally won three seats from Labour over the last few decades but never in circumstances that can be repeated by other candidates in other seats. This will be no different.

Also he's a deeply unpleasant individual. It's frustrating that the false charge of antisemitism gets thrown round like confetti by supporters of the Netanyahu regime, because when an actual bonafide antisemite like Galloway comes along people don't realise that this time the shoe does fit. His previous support for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is total horseshoe theory stuff.

theinspectorst, 4 months ago

A child who was groomed and sex trafficked by terrorists is now being punished for it. Also this is a punishment that is only being applied to her because she has Bangladeshi ancestors so the government argues she is hypothetically eligible for a Bangladeshi passport (which the government of Bangladesh has no intention of giving her), and so the Tories can pretend they're not illegally rendering her stateless.

This is literally a punishment that, by the Tories' own formulation of their rule, would not be applied if the sex trafficking victim was a white girl called Shania with English parents instead of a brown girl called Shamima.

We're supposed to be a country where people are treated equally before the law. But the Tories are now claiming that they and any future government has the right to render any Briton with some hypothetical right to a foreign passport (for example, most second generation immigrants and every single Jewish Briton) stateless at the whim of the home secretary.

theinspectorst, 3 months ago

Totally. In my alternative scenario where she was a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl called Shania, the Daily Express would have turned her into a Madeleine McCann-like figure and campaigned every day on their front pages to 'bring our girl home'.

theinspectorst, 4 months ago

I mean, bigotry and unenforceability aside, it's also pretty unambiguously illegal.

Italy is a signatory to the ECHR which creates an explicit right to privacy (Article 8) and freedom of religion (Article 9).

The Italian constitution itself also specifies a right to religious equality before the law (Article 8).

theinspectorst, 4 months ago

Muslim immigrants will have de facto faced as much (if not far more) hostility and prejudice before any of those events.

What changed is that by the late 20th century, it had become politically unacceptable for right-wing parties to be perceived to be preying on overt racism towards their countries' brown-skinned citizens. But the War on Terror at the start of the 21st century created a new organising framework for nativists, whereby they could incite hatred against exactly the same brown-skinned people as before, but claim they were targeting them for their religion and not their skin colour. At the heart of it is still the same prejudice towards those who are different, it's just that the aspect of difference they choose to focus on today is more politically acceptable than the one they used to focus on.

From the perspective of a brown-skinned Muslim immigrant, the ideological hoops the far-right jump through are likely irrelevant. These people were targeted by nativists before, and they get targeted by nativists now.

theinspectorst, 4 months ago

It's more than just a product of it - it's the main factor.

Over the last half century or so, the UK has experienced around 200 civilian deaths from Islamic terrorism and around 2,000 civilian deaths from Irish terrorism. Which community do you think the far-right in the UK tend to target?

theinspectorst, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The reason the board have given is - if true - a very reasonable reason to fire a CEO. The job of the board is to oversee, scrutinise and challenge the management, and if the management were lying to or withholding information from the board then that's an obvious reason for the management to go.

American corporate governance standards are really hit-and-miss, and in a lot of these tech firms you often end up with situations of CEOs doubling up as chairs of their boards - e.g. Musk, Zuckerberg , Bezos -something that structurally neuters the ability of the board to do its basic job of challenging the CEO! So when I see an American board standing up to a CEO that's trying to evade scrutiny, I feel that's something that should be applauded.

theinspectorst, 7 months ago

I mean, they're obviously not going to, so I guess Zuckerberg better go dust off what I can only assume is his comically large chequebook...