Conrad Black: Britain's Conservatives deserve to lose - "The election in the United Kingdom next week will mark another stumbled step in the descent of Britain into unprecedented political absurdity. It will bring in the sixth prime minister in eight years, a performance rivalling Third and Fourth Republic France, when General de Gaulle said that he often could not remember the name of the current head of the French government, so rapid was their turnover. (He was the only person in the history of France who served in cabinets in three different Republics.) The only time in British history when there has been such a frequent rotation of prime ministers was between 1827 and 1835, (Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Peel, and Melbourne, but Liverpool governed for 15 years, Grey for four, and Melbourne for six, and Canning died in office; all of them were statesmen of considerable or even great stature). The present cavalcade has been a broadening shambles, unlike anything in modern British history. It is almost certain to continue, as there is no indication that the incoming prime minister, Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, possesses what will be required to bring Britain out of this nosedive. The only leader in the history of the Labour Party capable of winning consecutive full terms in office was Tony Blair, and that was largely because Margaret Thatcher and John Major had left the country in such excellent condition. Starmer has no such good fortune and there is no indication that he possesses any comparable aptitude to govern. This difficult period has been chiefly the consequence of Britain’s inability to come to grips with the European issue, aggravated by the deep seated tradition of treachery and chicanery in the Conservative Party, (the last five p.m.’s have all been Conservatives). Britain in 1975 voted to approve entry into the European Economic Community, (common market). Without any consultation with the British public, the common market evolved into the European Union, gradually and stealthily, with the avowed goal of “an ever-closer Union,” i.e. a federal state of Europe subsuming the sovereign power of its constituent national governments... Margaret Thatcher, the first British politician to lead a party to three consecutive full-term victories since before the First Reform Act in 1832, was pushed out of office by her own party, essentially because of differences over Europe. John Major succeeded her and was unable to resolve those differences and the succeeding Conservative leaders, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith, Michael Howard, all unsuccessful, and David Cameron, attempted to finesse the issue. Cameron was finally pushed into promising a new referendum which he thought he could win by a brinkmanship choice of question: remain in Europe as it steadily federates or leave altogether. Cameron, a keen remainer, believed he could placate those minded to leave Europe by his promise to negotiate “full-on treaty change.” But after arduous negotiations he came back from Brussels with less than Neville Chamberlain brought back from Munich in 1938. He won the right of the United Kingdom to vary social benefit levels but only with the approval of all the other 27 EU member states. As all the world knows, he lost the so-called Brexit referendum in 2016 by a narrow margin and honourably resigned at once. The real British problem with the EU was a lack of democracy. Unlike the French and Italians, who generally consider government to be a nuisance and don’t feel very constrained to take most laws too seriously, or the Germans, who are accustomed to regimentation and are in any case the most influential country in Europe, the British like to be law-abiding but they like the laws to be sensible and democratically legislated. Once appointed, the Commissioners of Europe have practically unlimited power in their fields and are not subject to review by the European Parliament, which is a talking shop with more interpreters than members. Britain was not prepared to subordinate the system of government it had developed relatively peacefully over nearly a thousand years to the well-intentioned but fledgling and authoritarian bureaucracy in Brussels. Nor was it prepared to see its relations with the senior Commonwealth countries such as Canada and with the United States, subsumed into Brussels’ relationships with those countries. (When, in 2003, in my capacity as a Conservative member of the House of Lords, I asked our leader in that house, Lord (Geoffrey) Howe, the former chancellor and foreign secretary, if we could not establish a House of Lords committee on foreign affairs, he stared at me as if I had two heads and said that all that had been delegated to the European relations committee.)... The profound and almost equal division of British opinion between leaving Europe and remaining was aggravated by the tendency of the British Conservative Party to overthrow its own leaders. The last British Conservative party leader who retired voluntarily in good physical and political health was Stanley Baldwin in 1937... The Conservatives deserve the loss, but Labour is very undistinguished and does not deserve the victory and will have no idea what to do with it. The long and farcical national nightmare will end: the Conservatives will rediscover conservatism, will absorb or merge with the Reform Party, will develop a serious plan to exploit Britain’s independence of Europe, and will be back in government with a competent leader and excellent program in almost exactly four years. The intervening years will be thin gruel, but Britain has come through worse."
Meme - Licensed Memes: The Banterbury Tales: "Absolute state of Brit pol. Centre left party (Labour) acknowledges that other centre left party (Tories) are not controlling immigration (True) then delete it as the implication that they would do better is ray cist. Far left then accuse centre left of trying to be """far right""" party (equivalent to conservative 40 years ago but with de facto LGBT tolerance)"
Sooz Kempner is doing Edinburgh and then a tour @SoozUK: "Why'd they delete it? I thought Labour wanted to be the acceptable face of Reform in this election."
Labour to Win: "Let's be clear here. Rishi Sunak is the most liberal Prime Minister there has ever been on immigration. #BBCDebate
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Thread by @joshwhiton on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " A crazy experience — I lost my earbuds in a remote town in Chile, so tried buying a new pair at the airport before flying out. But the new wired, iPhone, lightning-cable headphones didn't work. Strange. So I went back and swapped them for another pair, from a different brand. But those headphones didn't work either. We tried a third brand, which also didn't work. By now the gift shop people and their manager and all the people in line behind me are super annoyed, until one of the girls says in Spanish, "You need to have bluetooth on." Oh yes, everyone else nods in agreement. Wired headphones for iPhones definitely need bluetooth. What? That makes no sense. The entire point of wired headphones is to not need bluetooth. So I turn Bluetooth on with the headphones plugged into the lightning port and sure enough my phone offers to "pair" my wired headphones. "See," they all say in Spanish, like I must be the dumbest person in the world. With a little back and forth I realize that they don't even conceptually know what bluetooth is, while I have actually programmed for the bluetooth stack before. I was submitting low-level bugs to Ericsson back in the early 2000's! Yet somehow, I with my computer science degree, am wrong, and they, having no idea what bluetooth even is, are right. My mind is boggled, I'm outnumbered, and my plane is boarding. I don't want wireless headphones. And especially not wired/wireless headphones or whatever the hell these things are. So I convince them, with my last ounce of sanity, to let me try one last thing, a full-proof solution: I buy a normal wired, old-school pair of mini-stereo headphones and a lightning adapter. We plug it all in. It doesn't work. "Bluetooth on", they tell me. NO! By all that is sacred my wired lightning adapter cannot require Bluetooth. "It does," they assure me. So I turn my Bluetooth on and sure enough my phone offers to pair my new wired, lightning adapter with my phone. Unbelievable. I return it all, run to catch my plane, and spend half the flight wondering what planet I'm on. Until finally back home, I do some research and figure out what's going on: A scourge of cheap "lightning" headphones and lightning accessories is flooding certain markets, unleashed by unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers who have discovered an unholy recipe: True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make. So instead of conforming to the Apple standard, these companies have made headphones that receive audio via bluetooth — avoiding the Apple specification — while powering the bluetooth chip via a wired cable, thereby avoiding any need for a battery. They have even made lightning adapters using the same recipe: plug-in power a fake lightning dongle that uses bluetooth to transmit the audio signal literally 1.5 inches from the phone to the other end of the adapter. In these remote markets, these manufacturers have no qualms with slapping a Lightning / iPhone logo on the box while never mentioning bluetooth, knowing that Apple will never do anything. From a moral or even engineering perspective, this strikes me as a kind of evil. These companies have made the cheapest iPhone earbuds known to humankind, while still charging $12 or $15 per set, pocketing the profits, while preying on the technical ignorance of people in remote towns. Perhaps worst of all, there are now thousands or even millions of people in the world who simply believe that wired iPhone headphones use bluetooth (whatever that is), leaving them with an utterly incoherent understanding of the technologies involved. I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this. And I wish humanity would use its engineering prowess for good, and not opportunistic deception. I ended the last paragraph hastily. What I would say instead is that despite the manufacturer outright lying on the packaging, Apple did create this mess with Lightning and removing the headphone port. They should’ve opened sourced Lightning and I’m glad it’s going away.
Since this went viral I'll add some details: The shop workers did not know why these devices needed Bluetooth (I do speak some Spanish), or which ones needed Bluetooth (since the packages didn't say so), or when they needed Bluetooth (since most people just leave BT/WiFi/everything on all the time). It was a confusing situation but we were all respectful while trying to figure it out. It was clear from our conversation that being surrounded by wired headphones and plug-in dongles that need Bluetooth (without any explanation or mention of Bluetooth on their packaging) had left them pretty confused about what Bluetooth is or what it's for. It doesn't mean they're stupid; technology can already be very confusing enough without being surrounded by crazy hacks like these devices. If writing this again I wouldn't say they had "no idea" what Bluetooth is. I was trying to drive home the hilarity that knowing a lot about Bluetooth and technology in general was only making the situation even more maddening than it would be to someone who never thought about digital wireless communications or analog audio signals at all. It was to highlight the epistemologically comical setup, not to insult anyone. As for why I didn't want wired-bluetooth-headphones, it's because simple wired headphones have better sound quality, lower-latency, comparably zero EMF, and don't present a potential security threat, which should be considered when a sketchy gadget unexpectedly asks to connect to your phone. If anyone agrees on anything (a miracle on X), it's that Apple created this problem by removing the mini-stereo port, either out of misplaced minimalism or greed, and making Lightning too costly. I'll also admit that the comments have made me slightly more appreciative of the clever workaround by these device manufacturers. And I've enjoyed learning the Hindi word and spirit of "jugaad". Still, these "wired" gadgets should disclose the Bluetooth requirement on their packaging. I do sympathize with businesses owners and retail workers (both jobs I've had) and so did buy a bunch of chocolate bars from the gift-shop to give them some profits. And since the shop probably got these wired-wireless devices for under $1 each, I do think my chocolate bar purchase ultimately put them ahead. I also think the employees got to keep the headphones, instead of them ending up in the trash or entirely unused as would have happened if I had kept them."
Thread by @rosaticorp on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " 🚨 Just received a phone call from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office this afternoon. Officer reads off his badge number & proceeds to ask if this is [my name] located at [my address] w/ SSN# [reads last 4 of my social]. Fuck. Was walking through Costco as I took the call. I confirmed accuracy. The officer proceeded to tell me that I failed to appear for jury duty & currently have a civil citation as a result, which can lead to an immediate arrest. He proceeded to ask if I was able to come down to the sheriff's office in town. He gave the address. I quickly Googled the address, confirming it is in fact the sheriff's office in town. Damn, legit. I proceeded to tell him that I never received a jury notice. He says that a common scam is going around. Scammers are forging jury summons, causing all sorts of problems. I had just moved into a new home a month ago. He listed off the date in which the letter should have arrived, and of course it was during the week I was moving. It all added up. The officer stated that I had two choices: 1) drive down to the sheriff's office today or 2) an officer would come to my house. I immediately hopped in my truck and started driving there. I'm anal, zero chance I missed jury duty, I'm 100% innocent. Orange isn't my color. Once I got in my car, I asked the officer for more proof that he was legitimate. He suggested I google the # that I took the call from. I did, it matched. He repeated his badge number, full name, the judge's name, etc. Google matched everything to a local corresponding person. I asked if I could patch in my lawyer as I drove. The officer stated that I could call him once I arrived at the station, and that there is currently a gag order in effect due to the high profile case at hand. In his words, they were attempting to entrap the scammers. After about 15 minutes on the phone, I was ~5 minutes away from the sheriff's HQ. The officer told me that I needed to bring two forms of ID, in addition to payment for the civil fines. He said I would be reimbursed once I could prove it was a forged signature. Once I confirmed that I had the cash, the officer notified me that I needed to make payment at an alternate location prior to arriving to the sheriff's office. He re-routed me to a "federal payment processing location"❗️ And there I am, 20 minutes into this phone call... after ditching my Costco basket mid-aisle, realizing I was getting scammed. THESE GUYS WERE GOOD. Their script was perfect. I fell hook, line & sinker. Every single data point matched. I'm young, and consider myself relatively tech savvy. Yet, I fell hard. I got off the phone and called the sheriff's office, who unfortunately told me that I wasn't their first call today. Multiple people are getting scammed on a daily basis. I only realized it once payment had to be posted somewhere other than the sheriff's office. I called back the scam number an hour later, no answer. They then called me back a few minutes after, starting the scam all over again. I went with it, only to feel more ashamed the second time. Once they realized I was screwing with them, they hung up. Some call center somewhere is absolutely RAKING in the cash on this. And whoever is coaching them deserves every bit of their bonus this month. I respect the hustle. I want to punch them in the face just as much as I want to hire them. Please roast me at your dinner table tonight, hopefully this story saves your mom, dad, grandma, whoever from falling for this insanity. If this post saves one person though, it's worth it. Thank you for attending my real world scam artist TED talk 🫡...
Some qualifying points for the keyboard warriors:
1. It's easy to say "never pick up a number you don't know". A lot of careers depend on answering the phone. Mine is one of them. Also, you're telling me you won't pick up the Amazon or Uber Eats driver's call? Lots of examples. Hard to hide entirely on DND.
2. Law enforcement does call civilians, that's a normal thing. Law enforcement will *not* push you to pay or meet for payment. They didn't do this until 20 minutes into the call. I have personally received phone calls from law enforcement in my life for other events in the past. As a business owner, it's a thing that happens.
3. For those tough guys who act like they would've sniffed it out in the first minute, just realize that every single piece of info was accurate. My personal data + sheriff's address + judge, etc. Yes, all things available online. If they had led with "come pay us", of course i would've known from the start. American accent, calm, level-headed "officer". They were trained well.
4. The even more detailed aspect of the scam was that they knew I had just moved. Their storyline was that scammers were fraudulently signing summons for civilians, and they just needed to confirm my signature in person to confirm this is what happened. Dumb in retrospect? Of course.
5. You can both respect a scammer's hustle & sophistication while also wanting to lock them up. Both things can be true. As an entrepreneur, I appreciate their talents. Just wish they would devote them to legitimate careers.
6. Roast me all you want, but this post is serving it's purpose. 2M+ ppl now know about a scam that they did not previously. It's gut wrenching to read the stories of those who lost their life savings. No, this isn't click-bait. I don't have anything to sell you."
Canyon (Rauschenberg) - Wikipedia - "Canyon was subject to an ownership controversy after the death of its owner, Ileana Sonnabend. This was due to the work’s inclusion of an endangered species: the taxidermied golden eagle. According to U.S. law, Canyon could never be sold because of the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The prohibition of its sale ultimately resulted in the work’s donation to the Museum of Modern Art in 2012... Sonnabend's heirs had little choice but to donate the piece after the IRS established the piece's value at $65 million and charged the Sonnabends $29.2 million in taxes to keep it. However, due to the golden eagle attached to the canvas, the sale of the painting would have been a felony; as such, the estate's appraisers placed a value of $0 on the painting"
Baby elephant tries to hide behind a light pole after being caught eating sugarcane in Thailand
NBC station WRC, Pat Collins Wears Grape Costume to Interview Student Suspended For Banana Costume - YouTube
Meme - "When a reporter wore a grape costume to support a boy suspended for wearing a banana suit."
Photoshop Terms of Service grants Adobe access to user projects for ‘content moderation’ - "Photoshop’s newest terms of service has users agree to allow Adobe access to their active projects for the purposes of “content moderation” and other various reasons. This has caused concern among professionals, as it means Adobe would have access to projects under NDA such as logos for unannounced games or other media projects. Sam Santala, the founder of Songhorn Studios noted the language of the terms on Twitter, calling out the company’s overreach. Tech companies are increasingly eager to supervise and spy on their users, recently Microsoft announced an AI powered product called Recall. Recall scans the screens of users, allowing them to search their past activity in common terms. The user agreement also leaves open the possibility to train AI using user-generated content, saying they can use the content they retrieve to “improve our Services and Software“."
Meme *Who wants to be a millionaire*
"Which of the following is morally wrong?"
"Hitting Your Wife"
"Slavery"
"Marrying a child"
"Eating bacon" *correct answer*
Meme - SNICKERS @SNICKERS: "You asked for it, and we listned. Just in time for Pride Month,we have added the huge dick veins around the whole bar! Snickers REALLY satisfies!"
Meme - *Hunter with rifle and scope*
*Deer in sights* "Gotcha"
*Deer shoots pistol like in James Bond introduction*
*blood drips from top of rifle barrel*
Meme Trinity from the Matrix: "Lesbian checking out a twink thinking "damn she's cute""
Neo from the Matrix: "Twink checking out a lesbian thinking "damn he's cute""
Meme - "Seng Kitchen. Welcome to our Shop ! ! !
15/5 - 17/5. To celebrate the inauguration of the Prime Minister, our restaurant has all the fishes 50% off"
Meme - *Condoms*
"SCORE GREAT TIMES WiTH 7-Eleven"
Meme - "Dolly Parton Pet Peeves
1. Nobody notices I've got a great ass, too!"
This is "real" too
Aldi shopper shocked by 'rude' find on a packet of red onions: 'What's going on?' - "An Aldi customer was left in disbelief after making a rude discovery while unpacking her groceries. The Irish shopper discovered an insulting image of a hand with the middle finger sticking up on the label of a bag of red onions."
Meme - "My girlfriend kept making fun of me during our walk because I wouldn't let go of this icicle I found, I have a feeling the boys will understand. *sword shape*"
Operation Flagship - Wikipedia - "Operation Flagship was a sting operation jointly organized by the United States Marshals Service and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. that resulted in the arrest of 101 wanted fugitives on December 15, 1985. The fugitives voluntarily went to the Washington Convention Center, responding to an invite sent by law enforcement posing as a fictitious television company, to claim two free tickets to watch the Washington Redskins home game against the Cincinnati Bengals and for a chance to win tickets to Super Bowl XX. A total of 166 marshals and police officers were involved in the operation, several of whom were disguised as tuxedo-wearing ushers, cheerleaders, emcees, caterers, mascots, and maintenance staff... Female undercover officers posing as cheerleaders were tasked with discreetly frisking the fugitives for concealed weapons by offering hugs and putting their arms around their waists while escorting fugitives to the next area."
owl on X - "I very briefly worked at a petroleum engineering ‘AI’ startup right out of college because I wanted to see if I would like non-healthcare/biology work It sucked But what I *did* learn was that picking well locations for oil companies is an incredibly challenging problem. To the point where ML models and fluid dynamics simulations alike were both bad at the problem But you know what was really good at it? An old dude named ‘Hans’ who was paid exorbitant amounts by BP to come in every now and then to the office, pick some points off a map, and go back home. Those points would be drilled down into and usually yielded pretty decent results in oil yield, often better than simulations alone. He worked for less than 5 hours a week, amortized over a year Hans, as I understood it, was just some person at BP who’d worked there for decades and had an intuitive sense of what was and wasn’t a good place to drill down into. He wasn’t alone, multiple, but less than a dozen, employees at BP existed just like him. He wasn’t unique to BP either, apparently all major oil companies had a team of Hans-esque figures that helped pick the wells. It was just widely agreed upon that human intuition is really important in well picking and story was left at that The whole thing really weirded me out and it felt like a ghost story told amongst petroleum engineers, because literally nobody knew more information about him or other people like him beyond what I’ve said here. Multiple people corroborated the story of these figures existing, but nobody had actual details What were their backgrounds? Were the accuracies actually *that* high? What were they picking up on? never found out the answer to any of these oil is such a bizarre field"
Meme - es @cirkelnio: ""anomalous precision" reminds me of how one of the suggested SI redefinitions of the kilogram in 2018 relied entirely on one german man making a perfect silicon sphere with his super hands"
"Achim Leistner. Australian optician of German origin. Achim Leistner is an Australian optician of German origin. During his retirement, he was asked to join the Avogadro project to craft a silicon sphere with high smoothness, as automated machining does not match his precision. In addition to precision instruments, Leistner uses his hands to feel for irregularities in the roundness of the sphere. The research team has called his extraordinary sense of touch "atomic feeling'. As a result the sphere is the roundest man-made object ever manufactured in the world. If the sphere was scaled to the size of Earth, it would have a high point of only 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) above sea level"
Meme - John Cheeseman: "Not exactly the pot of gold I was hoping for. *rainbow ending at portaloo*"
29-year-old Tokyo man arrested after letting schoolgirl live with him - "Among the anime that premiered this spring was "Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway." The lengthy title covers most of the premise, as it’s a story about a single young adult salaryman who lets a runaway schoolgirl live with him while she figures out what the next stage of her life is going to be. It’s not the most preposterous setup ever for an anime series, but it’s definitely a case where the situation would quickly lose just about any pretense of wholesomeness in real life. As proof, 29-year-old Takeharu Komiya has been arrested following four days of cohabiting with a high school girl who ran away from home. The two became acquainted through social media, where the girl had posted about wanting to leave home, eventually telling Komiya “I’d be happy if you’d give me the option of running away to your place.” He agreed, and on June 13 the girl made her way from her home in Saitama Prefecture, which borders Tokyo to the north, to Komiya’s condominium in Chiyoda Ward. The girl’s parents, who were unaware of what their daughter had done, contacted the police when she didn’t come home that night. The ensuing search led them to Komiya’s condo, where he and the girl were both present. Komiya has admitted to the course of events outlined above and was placed under arrest on suspicion of abducting a minor. The girl showed no sign of injuries. There’s perhaps a claim to be made that since the girl was apparently the one who initially floated the idea of living at Komiya’s condo, and came of her own free will once he agreed, that “abducting” isn’t the right word for what he did. That’s a semantics argument, though, and in the eyes of the law, saying “Sure!” when a minor asks if they can live with you without their parents’ consent, that’s still generally considered kidnapping."
Meme - *action figures around table (Dragonball characters (?) with Dodoria (big ugly purple being))*
*whatever podcast with Gorlock with Destroyer*
Two teachers in Guelph scolded after field trip down a storm drain
Meme - Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps: "Sweden's porn preferences vs radiation received from Chernobyl"
"Most popular porn categories Density of radioactive fallout per region from Chernobyl"