Links - 18th November 2024 (1 [including BC Election])

Adam Pankratz: Election proves David Eby is an embarrassing failure - "In 2022 David Eby was handed the power of John Horgan’s thumping 57 seat majority, when Horgan stepped down for health reasons. Saturday night, British Columbians decided Eby didn’t deserve it anymore. Results are incredibly close and recounts are scheduled for several ridings but as it stands the NDP are elected or leading in the most seats with 46, the B.C. Conservatives stand at 45 and the Greens hold the balance of power with two seats. Forty-seven seats are required for a majority in BC’s legislature. For David Eby there is no way to sugar coat the results: this is an embarrassment and a rejection of him and his failed policies. He may remain premier, but not because British Columbians want him there. Indeed, he holds the dubious distinction of being premier but never actually being chosen by the citizens of British Columbia for that honour; he was given power by Horgan and will only survive with Green support. Worse, this embarrassing result comes after an election in which Eby fully sold his soul and dumped any semblance of principles in order to hang on to office. Let us not forget that just prior to the election, Eby suddenly abandoned the carbon tax and also did an about turn on involuntary care for people with addictions. As recently as two weeks before his about-face on the carbon tax, Eby had labelled Conservative leader John Rustad a “climate denier leading a band of conspiracy theorists” for his anti-carbon tax stance. But, as the Conservatives rose in the polls and the NDP sank, Eby decided the carbon tax needed to go... Eby now relies upon the Green party to hold on to power. This is the party he openly encouraged voters not to vote for , worried it might split the vote of the NDP. It is also the party which ultimately only cares about one thing, and that’s the environment. It doesn’t take a genius to see what the Greens are going to demand in return for their support: maintaining the carbon tax. To stay as premier he will likely need to pull another switcheroo on the people of B.C. and keep the tax he said British Columbians couldn’t afford. In his election night speech Eby did his best to put on a brave face, but it was clear he was crushed by the result. The best he could offer was to say that “We don’t know what the final count is going to be in the province, but we what we do know is that there was a clear majority for the progressive values that are so important.” He then vaguely noted that the message to him and the NDP sent by British Columbians was that “we gotta do better.” We know that had he won a majority, even a slim one, he would have proclaimed that British Columbians had decisively rejected hate and conspiracy theories. After branding the Conservative party writ-large as racist crackpots during the campaign does this mean Eby currently presides over a province which embraced such ideas? The answer is no, but Eby will have to work hard to convince British Columbians he doesn’t actually view many of them as regressive troglodytes... John Rustad and the Conservatives, elated though they are, must feel a small tinge of regret. While they ran an incredible campaign, which spoke to the affordability issue British Columbians face, it wasn’t perfect. Candidates with very questionable past social media post, for example, inevitably contributed to an overall sense that perhaps the Conservatives weren’t quite ready for government. Those candidates could have been removed prior to the election and the results may well have been an extra seat or two. That’s all it would have taken. Nonetheless, John Rustad — regardless of what lies ahead — will go down in B.C. political legend for taking a moribund party which last election garnered only 1.8 per cent of the vote to within one seat of government in 2024."

Amy Hamm: The NDP fought dirty. I wish John Rustad had fought back - "In his end of night address, which sounded much like a concession speech, Eby begrudgingly let Rustad have a small win: “He spoke to the frustrations of a lot of British Columbians,” he said, unsmiling. But then went on to add: “We’re fighting hate and racism and division.” We all know exactly who Eby is pointing the finger at. He has signalled his intention to continue insulting the character of anyone who disagrees with him. By contrast, Rustad was all smiles and spoke of the incredible rise of his party. This was a Conservative victory, no matter the ultimate outcome... There’s no question that the public is tired of the status quo. We are tired of rampant homelessness, of unaffordable housing, of harm reduction failures, of public crime and disorder, of a health-care system on the brink of collapse, of a lacklustre economy, of government behaving as though our children’s minds belong to the state, and of a ruling party that — similar to Prime Minister Trudeau’s government — has embraced divisive identity politics beyond the point of being palatable to anyone but the most hardcore party base. As it happens, people find it distasteful to be referred to as racists, anti-vaxxers, bigots, homophobes, and conspiracy theorists... The NDP had no choice, really, other than to run a dirty campaign. Any party with such a deplorable record as Eby’s must rely on deflection, projection, and distraction. The NDP leader demanded the Conservatives drop as many as seven candidates for old social media posts, which would have conveniently ensured the party was granted another majority. Through his campaign, Eby was snide, condescending, and contemptuous towards his opponents; his attitude and behaviour were so unchallenged, however, that people may have started to wonder if he had a point... Regardless, the NDP is going to have to reckon with the fact that they’ve lost many supporters and have, by extension of their attacks, intimated that huge numbers of British Columbians are “anti-vax,” bigoted, conspiracy theorists for supporting the Conservatives... Naguib spoke at Vancouver Art Gallery in support of Samidoun leader, Charlotte Kates, following her arrest for praising Hamas and Hezbollah and chanting, “Long live October 7,” one month earlier. “We will not be intimidated. We will not go away … We will keep being loud. We will keep disrupting,” Naguib announced. In Mission, B.C., Naguib, and a merry band of terrorist supporters, relied on emotional blackmail to push for a ceasefire motion: he suggested that if council did not do as he pleased, then they would reveal themselves to be the type of people who’d go along with genocide and would have celebrated Canada’s residential schools in real time. In Port Moody, where the city’s ceasefire motion was rightfully revoked, mayor Meghan Lahti cited harassment and threats as a large part of the city’s decision. “This motion has been co-opted by a group that has spread hate,” Lahti said. The keffiyeh crowd intimidated and slandered those who spoke against the motion. One went so far as to threaten the child of a city councillor. They are, frankly, maniacs. Samidoun’s calls for “death to Canada” at a Vancouver rally on the anniversary of October 7 were not surprising in the least. As Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Indeed."
What a sore loser

'We're the only ones that can fight back': Why the federal NDP is taking a close look at the B.C. election - "NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the initial election results in British Columbia are proof that the New Democrats are the “only ones” who can fight back against Conservatives and said his troops are gearing up for a similar battle at the federal level."
Weird. Left wingers like to claim that the BC NDP is unrelated to the federal NDP, and that the BC NDP is really a conservative party

B.C. Green leader spoke with NDP's Eby, but didn't pick up when Conservatives called
You're not allowed to talk to anyone the left disapproves of

Muslim teacher, 30, who told pupils Islam was going to take over and branded Western girls 'lunatics' is banned from teaching after 'undermining fundamental British values' - "A Muslim teacher has been banned from teaching for life after telling pupils Islam was going to take over and branding Westernised girls as 'lunatics'.  Aqib Khan, 30, was sacked from the profession for 'undermining fundamental British values' by a professional conduct panel of the Teaching Regulation Agency.  Khan was an English teacher at Harborne Academy, Birmingham between December 2020 and March 2023, the panel heard. But during that period he made a series of comments on a Microsoft Teams group which where professionally unacceptable.  Among those comments were how he discussed how to 'get girls' and showed a topless photo of himself flexing his muscles to one pupil. The panel also heard he openly attacked feminism in his classes... He told pupils how he rejected a female doctor who earned £70,000 because he couldn't be with a woman who made more money than him, the panel heard.  Khan also told his students a woman having a baby over the age of 30 was more likely to be disabled than a wife having one with her cousin... referring to the increasing Muslim population Khan allegedly told his students: 'Natural selection increasing our numbers as a result. By 2050 the whole of UK, France and Germany will look like Birmingham'  'The number of Muslims went up 44 per cent in 10 years. Everyone else is falling or growing at a snail's pace. Traditional values > liberalism' In another post presented to the panel, Khan allegedly shared a news article stating 'alcohol ban helps female fans enjoy hassle-free football in Qatar'. He captioned the post: 'White women enjoying life under shariah lol'  The panel heard that he also informed students that they would be 'replaced by Muslims' if they supported feminism or progressive ideologies. 'If you believe in feminism, if you believe in aborting babies, in man and man and woman being married, if you believe in working until you are 35 years old and not having any children. If you believe all this stuff, that's fine, believe in it,' he said.  'But I am telling you one fact, you're going to get replaced by Muslims even faster, they will replace you even faster'."
Islamophobia!
Meanwhile in the US teachers talk about their personal lives with their students to groom them, and if you object, you're a bigot

The real reason why Ontario megaprojects go off the rails - "Governments of the day live for the hard hat and shovel announcements. Politicians have big egos with short memories and are rarely still in power for the eventual disappointments, so they make the projects unnecessarily large in scope with overly ambitious designs.  As projects progress, however, inevitable challenges that were likely predicted by the experts but ignored, crop up necessitating scope changes. All of which increase costs and throw projects off schedule — none of which is likely revealed to the public.  Politicians also love to minimize the cost of their pet project to ensure the voting public knows they are being fiscally responsible and naysayers stay on side. Budgeting for such projects is based on the year it is planned and does not consider inflation and other economic conditions, which will inevitably boost the cost by the time construction ends. This is one reason a $1 billion price tag becomes $2 billion... Many people have waited on the completion of their pre-construction home or big renovation project, so they are familiar with the fluid predictions of contractors. Opening dates for megaprojects are guesstimates at best but that is rarely spoken about openly to update the public every step of the way. To a politician or leader, explaining delays honestly throughout construction may seem risky to their career or popularity, but the truth leaks out eventually. The public is more resentful when they feel lied to.  Agencies are getting better at communicating real-time construction impacts, but politicians still have the inclination to minimize the headaches coming. We’ve all heard the false assurance that building a subway underground is painless. There are some folks living on Eglinton Avenue who know that’s b.s. Building infrastructure can be exceptionally painful and that’s another truth that can’t be hidden forever.   Navigating through permits, environmental assessments, and public consultations can lead to delays and add costs but meeting these requirements can’t be shortchanged. The not-in-my-backyard folks can effectively stall projects but rarely will politicians risk angering voters by saying that out loud... Although we’ve been burnt a lot of late, transit project delays and cost overruns aren’t unique to Toronto. Crossrail in London encountered complex engineering issues, funding shortfalls and labour shortages, resulting in delays and budget overruns. The Sydney Metro project in Australia also faced similar problems with similar results."
The downside of Anglo democracy and property rights is building housing and infrastructure is harder

oomf magazine on X - "The upper middle class yearns for public transit but without poor people"
wanye on X - "This is a common category error. The fact that they’re poor is incidental. Imagine a disordered person, an aggressive person. Somebody who gets in fights for no reason, disobeys rules to no particular end, is aggressive, confrontational. Maybe we’re just imagining a person who doesn’t take care of themselves, who looks disordered, who stinks.  Is this person an engineer or medical doctor? A middle manager at an insurance firm? No, all things being equal, people who behave this way are not going to do very well in a modern, polite, economy.  They will be poor, in other words.  The poverty is an effect, not a cause, not the thing anybody cares about when they’re next to this person on the bus."

Thread by @NathanLands on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I'M SHOCKED.  After living in Japan for over two years, I recently visited the USA with my wife. It made me realize that the USA is dysfunctional in so many ways and has such a low-quality standard across the board.  Here are the things I noticed:
Everywhere you go, you run into little things that don't work. Half the escalators I saw were not working, soap was missing in the bathrooms, etc.  Once you notice it, you see it everywhere in America. Things just don't work.  Everything works in Japan, and it would be unacceptable if things didn't work. Service is so bad compared to Japan, and you have to tip.  We stayed at a nice hotel in Boston, and the workers went on strike. This meant our rooms didn't get cleaned, etc., and they banged on drums outside the window. My wife couldn't believe people would do that. I get it. From the Japanese perspective, it's like, how could the people we were paying to provide us with service not provide the service? Furthermore, not only did they not offer the service, but they harassed us.  In contrast, while we were in Japan, my wife got gifts for about eight people at her workplace, including her boss, to thank them for letting her take time off.  The culture and respect for work are just so different... basically, different planets. Everything is so expensive. To my surprise, it's dramatically cheaper living in Japan than most of the US. Waikiki was especially nuts.
There is a sense of danger walking around US cities that doesn't exist in Japan.  We had two homeless people harass us; one ran in front of us like a zombie, and it freaked my wife out.  And on two different occasions, we saw large men threatening women.  One was very bizarre. In a mall dining court in Waikiki, a man threatened his girlfriend who was running from him that he would "bash her fucking brains in if she didn't come back".  Then, when we returned to Japan... I felt a sense of relief. Here you never have any sense of danger anywhere you go, at any time.  I have a feeling a lot of people are living with anxiety from those kinds of encounters, and they don't even realize it.
Homeless people in the US sometimes insult you if you don't give them money.  Happened twice in Waikiki.  In Japan, homeless people are rare. And when you do see them, they are almost always very respectful and don't bother people. There are more car accidents than in Japan. I got stuck in traffic twice due to accidents.  I asked Perplexity and apparently on a per capita basis, there are 2.5x more car fatalities in the USA than Japan.
Flights get delayed way more often. Perhaps this is another quality control issue? In America, the TSA is very rude and threatening. In Japan, they're extremely polite and helpful. They're so different. So many things are locked up in stores in the USA. My wife asked me what that was, but she didn't understand. And when I told her, she couldn't believe how bad it was. It scared her to know that was an issue. Immigration in the US is slow, and they ask you tons of questions, which is wild considering our current border issue and how easy it is to get into the country illegally.  In contrast, they asked one question in Japan, smiled, and let me in.
Public toilets are so disgusting. In Japan, you don't have this problem at all.  Oh, and of course, now, USA toilets feel incredibly primitive after living in Japan. In cities, everywhere smells like weed. Or worse. The portion sizes are so huge. I gained 7 pounds in 2 weeks. Of course, there are also good things about the USA, like the diversity of food, etc. And there is something a little exciting about the chaos. But I now feel way less interested in moving back to the USA.  It feels like something is more deeply wrong than I realized."

Thread by @timjcarden on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In 2018, Burger King pulled off the biggest heist in food history.  They stole millions of McDonald's customers using one sneaky trick.  The result? 1.5 Million app downloads in 9 days.  Here's how they did it:
In 2018, Burger King was in a pickle.  McDonald's had 14,000 US locations. Burger King? Just 7,000.  They couldn't compete on convenience. So they decided to compete on creativity.  Enter "The Whopper Detour campaign":
The concept was simple, yet brilliant:  Offer a 1-cent Whopper to anyone within 600 feet of a McDonald's.  But here's the twist: customers had to order through the BK app.  Burger King spent a year developing this technology:
It was no mean feat:
• Geofencing all 14,000 McDonald's locations
• Ensuring the app could handle massive traffic
• Creating a mobile ordering system from scratch
But the payoff was worth every penny...
On December 4, 2018, the campaign launched.  Social media exploded. News outlets picked up the story.  People were driving to McDonald's... to order Burger King.  It wasn't just marketing. It was performance art.  And by the end of the campaign? The results were staggering:
• 50 million views on Twitter alone
• 1.5 million app downloads in 9 days
• 3.3 billion earned media impressions
• BK app jumps from #686 to #1 in App Store
Burger King had turned McDonald's biggest strength into a weakness.
But it wasn't just about the numbers. The campaign showcased Burger King's brand personality:
• Clever
• Irreverent
• Willing to take risks
They weren't just selling burgers. They were selling an attitude. The marketing world took notice:...
The long-term impact?
• Stronger brand loyalty
• A new playbook for digital marketing
• Increased app usage and mobile orders"

F* Your Short Memory 🏴 Anti-Cult of Absurdity on X - "One dude. No militia. Already released on bail. Local law enforcement say there were threats, but none in their or the surrounding counties. Known 24 hours ago. For the media lecturing citizens about spreading harmful rumors, they learned it from you. 😒"
Arrest made amid security threats prompting FEMA contractors to ‘stand down’

Meme - Jonatan Pallesen @jonatanpallesen: "General purpose infographic template I'm working on. What do you think?"
"Overlooked Causation. Grey causal arrows emphasized. Blue causal arrow ignored"
"Smart parents -> Home library -> Teen skills
Smart parents -> Genes, general upbringing -> Teen skills"
Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41: "Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teens skills equivalent to university graduates."

Collin Rugg on X - "Man comes 'back to life' as surgeons began the process of harvesting his body parts after they determined he was de*d  Kentucky man TJ Hoover II was thrashing on the table & "crying visibly" as doctors prepared to remove his organs.  Before the process, the family raised concerns that Hoover was alive because his eyes seemed open and he looked around while being wheeled to the operating room.  They were told that it was a "common reflex."  Hoover had been declared "brain de*d" after an overdose.  When Hoover started thrashing and crying, he was sedated and doctors *still* planned on going forward with the organ recovery, according to NPR.   The transplant was ultimately cancelled leading to several employees quitting.   The Kentucky Attorney General and US Health Services Resources Administration are now reportedly investigating the incident.  "I feel betrayed by the fact that the people that were telling us he was brain de*d, and then he wakes up," his sister told NPR."
A man declared dead almost had surgery to donate his organs, but he was still alive : Shots - Health News : NPR
How ignorant. They should've trusted the experts. Medical school isn't something Google can replace, after all

Meme - "Why does my son have a spoon stuck to his gaming screen?"

Meme - "You have 3 Nukes. Choose where you want them explode"
"1. Antarctica to see what the global warming crowd would do.
2. San Andreas Fault to speed things up with getting California off us.
3. Hiroshima, just in case they thought we were sorry."

Meme - "Warhammer 40k"
"How long do you think modern humanity would fare against an ork invasion?"
"++ADMIN NOTICE++ The next person who mentions BLM in this thread will be removed and blocked from our entire network."

Meme - ceiling bird @ceilingbirdbeep: "The new Home Depot commercial.  No comment." *Black woman changing smoke detector*

Meme - Dangerous Matt @MattyVero: "My mate spent £5700 in a stripclub last night and this what he has to say for himself:"
"So unfair they pretend they love you"

Meme - Ant: "Man... these are the best Crumbs I've ever had!"
Man: "Ayoo no wayy!! I thought I lost this cum sock ages ago!!"
Ant:

'Unesco-cide': does world heritage status do cities more harm than good? - "Chew Jetty in Malaysia’s George Town attracts tourists by the boatload. Historic homes are now commercial stalls branded with neon signs; one-time fishermen peddle T-shirts, magnets and postcards. Tour buses deposit vacationers from early in the morning until well after sunset.  The daily intrusion has clearly taken a toll: windows are boarded, “no photo” signs are pervasive, and tenants quickly vanish at the sight of a foreign face.  “I would like to remind people that we are not monkeys, and this is not a zoo,” says Lee Kah Lei, who runs a souvenir stall outside her home on the Chew Jetty...  Once, the “clan jetties” on the outskirts of George Town on Penang island, were a bustling seafront hub. A ramshackle collection of stilt houses and sheds, stretching along a line of wooden piers each bearing the surname of its Chinese clan, they are one of the last intact bastions of Malaysia’s old Chinese settlements.  The seven remaining jetties survived two world wars and Japanese occupation, but as the decades wore on the piers deteriorated. And when the formidable threat of encroaching developers raised its head, the owners of the jetties had only one place to turn: they made an 11th-hour bid to Unesco for protection... Now, however, residents say the victory was not what they hoped for at all. Where fishermen, oyster harvesters and fortune tellers once plied their trade, souvenir vendors and snack bars have taken root. The locals say they were caught unawares by a tide of tourism that has washed over their stilt village. It’s a similar complaint that has resounded across Europe this summer, as cities from Barcelona to Venice try to balance the positive effects of tourism with the inevitable downsides... The phenomenon has even been given a name by Italian writer Marco d’Eramo, who argued in New Left Review that Unesco preserves buildings but allows the communities around them to be destroyed, often by tourism. He calls it “Unesco-cide”."

Meme - "Don't try to change her, replace her. *Man with fat woman* *Man with thin woman*"
Women can be very proud about replacing their partners, so (e.g. that joke about losing 200 or something pounds referring to breaking up with her boyfriend)

Are we entering a new analogue age? Gen Z is leading us there - "Many of these young vinyl collectors don't have a turntable because they don't need to. They can lie on their bed examining their new physical album purchase for its artwork, liner notes and lyrics while streaming it. From that perspective, it's the best of both worlds. It also offers a break from screens. Some have ditched listening on headphones, too, because they can make one feel disconnected. CD sales are still falling, but the rate of decline may be slowing as gen Z gets into that format, too. For them, the CD is just as ancient as an LP or a cassette, but it's a real-world object. That's both a novelty and reassuring. And physical representations of music have given birth to a new type of fandom, status and expression of identity. "I'm willing to spend THIS MUCH on things like records and CDs to prove that I'm a big music fan! I have five feet of shelving to display my music collection!" Trying doing that with Spotify or a hard drive full of digital files. Artists have been responding to this trend, led by Taylor Swift and her endless issuance of multiple vinyl versions. Physical editions help fuel fandom and superfandom. The Weeknd, Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter know this, too. I spoke at a high school earlier this month in front of about 300 students, a sizable portion of whom were wearing T-shirts displaying the logos of '90s bands: Nirvana, Rush, Metallica, The Hip, even more niche acts like Suicidal Tendencies. Such retro merch far, far exceeded that of any current artist. When I asked a few of them about their favourite era of music, most of them cited the '90s. I also spotted more than one student rocking a flip phone. This desire for feature-free phones has caught the attention of the industry. Earlier this year, The Boring Phone was released and was so successful that a second version is coming soon. "Tired of being controlled by your phone? It’s time for a change. Introducing BP2 (Boring Phone 2) – the next generation of tech that respects your time and attention." They could have also added, "We won't harvest your personal data so that we can sell it." It's not just phones, either. Notice that standalone cameras are back again thanks to gen Z? Not just film cameras, either; even the Polaroid camera is a thing again. The somethings grainy, often imperfect photos that result are valued for their realness and authenticity."

Links - 17th November 2024 (2 - UK Migrant Riots)

VoxPopuli on X - "🇬🇧 Rotherham: An 11-year-old girl who previously reported she was sexually abused was found in a derelict house with another girl and a group of adult males. She was arrested for drunken disorderly, and none of the males were arrested.  Police officers dismissed a case where a 12-year-old girl was having sex with five Asian males as quote "100% consensual in every incident".  Fathers have tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from the houses where they were being abused only to find themselves arrested when police arrived to the scene.
Home Affairs Committee 09 Sep 2014.
Crompton retired with a £2m pension in 2016."

MP calls for Wigan hotel to stop housing asylum-seekers after incident involving schoolgirl - "Security has been stepped up and the council is in talks with the firm managing asylum-seekers at a Wigan hotel amid claims of schoolgirls’ being watched and harassed.  Several parents from the Standish area have told wigantoday that they are stopping their daughters from going out because groups of men have allegedly been filming their PE lessons at the local high school, winking and passing comments at them in the street and, in one instance, surrounding a 12-year-old and filming her.  Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said she was appalled that the Britannia Hotel in Standish was being used to accommodate vulnerable asylum-seekers again, several years after both the Home Office and services operator Serco accepted that it was completely unsuitable for the purpose, and had done so with no notice or consultation with the police, council, herself or the local community.  And she demanded that the arrangement ends again as soon as possible."
From 2021. They should've arrested all the racist far right extremists earlier

Meme - ~~datahazard~~ @fentasyl: "The UK increased the number of Illegal Words or Writing cases it brings while achieving an ever higher conviction rate:
- 64% Convicted in 2012 (2425 of 3773)
- 79% Convicted in 2023 (4682 of 5964)
That's 61,100 cases & 45,000 convictions from 2012-2023, not including those who faced Summary Judgement.  Including Summary Judgements would increase these numbers by an additional 35,100 proceedings & 27,400 convictions -- combined, nearly 100,000 cases brought in total.  And, remember, everything in this graph is from before the current regime."
"8.13 Racially or religiously aggravated causing intentional harassment, alarm or distress - words or writing"
Clearly, the Tories are a far right party which promotes hate speech, so the UK needs even more legislation to "protect" "minorities"

Meme - "A reminder for the marxists lurking in the shadows here - 'Riots are the language of the unheard'
FAR-RIGHT RIOTING THUGS *lighter skin*
FIERY, BUT Mostly PEACEFUL PROTESTORS *darker skin*"

Meme - pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism: "they’re manifesting jail cells out of thin air for people who took to the streets outraged over the murder of three little girls but they’re refusing to jail child rapists bc “prison overcrowding.”  do you understand yet 🌞"
"Child rapist is spared jail due to the prison overcrowding crisis as judge admits 'it would have been virtually inevitable that you would have gone into custody'"
"UK riots: More than 500 new prison places released to deal with those behind disorder"
Anarcho-tyranny means crimes against the Regime must be cracked down on without mercy, but others are fine

Labour should put public safety first - "The Government is set to announce the early release of prisoners to avoid overcrowding, putting more than 20,000 criminals back on the streets in the near future.   Labour’s manifesto directly criticised the Conservative government for releasing prisoners early, and pledged to uphold the “basics of a safe, secure, law-abiding society” by ensuring “criminals will be punished”... It will be of slim comfort to the electorate that the scheme will have exemptions for what are described as sexual and serious violent offenders. It is a phrasing which leaves open the question of who, exactly, might qualify as a non-serious violent offender, and who exactly we might soon find ourselves standing next to on the street.  Even setting this aside, it is difficult to believe that the early release of shoplifters, burglars and other thieves will do a great deal to improve people’s sense of personal safety.   The new prisons minister, James Timpson, is a decent man who has done a great deal to improve the prospects of those released from our jails. However, his view that Britain is “addicted to punishment” is wrong-headed.   Britain is not “addicted to punishment”, but to offering second, third, and fourth chances to those already found to present a danger to society. It is depressingly common to read about a brutal crime and subsequently be presented with a long list of the perpetrator’s previous offences.   It is a state of affairs that sits extremely poorly alongside Parliament’s love of creating new criminal offences in knee-jerk responses to high profile events.   The result is a society which simultaneously seems to be bound up in an ever-increasing number of laws, while feeling increasingly lawless; politicians trumpet new regulations even as offences go unattended."

Agony for mother of teen killed in machete attack after learning one of his killers will be released after just SIX MONTHS due to prison overcrowding under new Labour scheme - "The mother of a teenage boy who was killed in a machete attack faces fresh agony today after being told one of his killers will be released just six months into his jail term due to prison overcrowding.  Gordon Gault, 14, died in hospital six days after he was attacked with a blade during an ongoing feud in Elswick, Newcastle, in November 2022.  After a trial at Newcastle Crown Court Carlos Neto, 18, and Lawson Natty, also 18, were convicted of manslaughter and unlawful wounding.  Neto, from Manchester, was jailed for nine years and two months, while Natty, from Newcastle, was handed two years and eight months at their sentence hearings in March.  But Gordon's mum Dionne Barrett was left devastated when she received a letter confirming Natty's early release at the weekend... Although those convicted of sex offences and domestic abuse are exempt, other violent offenders, including killers convicted of manslaughter, can be released."
Clearly, killing someone in a machete attack is not a serious violent offence. If you protest this, you are a racist far right extremist and need to go to prison yourself

Man freed early from UK prison allegedly assaulted woman on same day - "A man is alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman on the day he was freed from prison under the government’s early release scheme.  The controversial scheme, which allows some prisoners to be released after serving 40% of their sentence, came into force on Tuesday to ease overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales... The government’s early release policy, which reduces the proportion of sentences some inmates must serve from 50% to 40%, does not apply to criminals serving sentences for sexual offences, serious violent offences with a sentence of four years or more and certain offences connected to domestic abuse such as stalking and nonfatal strangulation.  However, criminals serving prison sentences of less than four years for some violent offences – including manslaughter – can be released, as can some criminals with a history of domestic violence"

My ex threatened to orphan our children — now he’s being released early - "A woman who was nearly killed by her ex-husband has branded the government’s early prison release scheme “unbelievably cruel” for victims. Elizabeth Hudson said she had been informed last week that her attacker could be freed in December, nine months earlier than scheduled. Martin Underwood, currently at HMP Lindholme, near Doncaster, was sentenced in February 2023 to a total of six years and three months for attacking Hudson and a subsequent partner. He had originally been due to be released next September. However, Hudson received a “very, very cold letter” from the Victim Contact Scheme notifying her that he could be released under a home detention curfew after serving just 38 per cent of his sentence... The government has sought to exclude domestic abusers from the scheme but there is no single offence for domestic abuse, so it chose to exempt only those convicted of offences specific to domestic violence, such as coercive control, non-fatal strangulation, harassment, stalking and breach of a restraining order. Underwood qualifies for the scheme because his convictions — for threats to kill and assault occasioning actual bodily harm — are broader offences not specific to domestic abuse... Hudson also accused the government of hypocrisy by bringing in an early release scheme that did not exclude all domestic abusers given Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. He has also pledged to treat male violence against women on a par with terrorism... Hudson escaped and the police were called to the scene. She told The Times: “If I hadn’t been able to escape, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.” Underwood went on to attack his next partner just 16 months later, while on police bail... The early release scheme exempts prisoners with sentences for violent offences of over four years. The prison service has separated Underwood’s sentence by his two attacks, which means he remains eligible."

Cal 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 on X - "Our government is releasing violent criminals and women abusers in order to lock up people who make mean tweets. Disgusting."

Drill rapper 'Young Dizz' who tortured boy walks free on early release - "A gang member and drill rapper jailed for kidnapping and torturing a 16-year-old boy has walked free from prison as part of Labour’s early release scheme.  Isaac Donkoh, 28, who went by the street name ‘Young Dizz’, posted selfies from the back of a £140,000 Land Rover after regaining his freedom yesterday.  He was handed a 12-and-a-half-year sentence in April 2019 but got out along with 1,200 other inmates in a second wave of early releases under the Government’s policy to free up prison space...   He was forced to strip naked as Donkoh filmed him on his iPhone and threatened to ‘cut him up’.  The victim was whacked over his face, back, legs and arms with a metal pole and some of his hair was chopped off with scissors.  The boy was forced to call his parents and beg for £1,500 to secure his release... ‘Donkoh fronted drill music videos for his gang which goaded rivals and recruited boys as young as 14 to commit serious violence...  ‘The government is moving too loose they releasing all the villains for a final battle.’"

Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 on X - "#bbclaurak: Do you think we are a racist country?
Keir Starmer: "No... We are a country of decent, tolerant people... the real Britain was the people that came out the day after... they are the real face of Britain."
Carl Benjamin on X - "The "racists" who don't want children stabbed are not real British people, according to the prime minister. Absolutely chilling that not only can he not empathise with the English, he views them as frauds in their own country."

Meme - Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray: "This man, identified by the British courts as Wayne O’Rourke, was arrested for these posts. His crime? Criticizing the establishment. Dark times for the UK when you can be imprisoned for making fun of the government."

Meme - "Two years in prison for waving an English flag in England. The UK justice system is broken."
"South Yorkshire police gave 'no arrest' deal to Rotherham grooming gang ringleader"
"Teenager who waved England flag near North Yorkshire Islamic centre jailed"
Elon Musk @elonmusk: "Insane. If you commit a violent crime, you won't be prosecuted. But don't even think about expressing your opinion on social media about this, because that will result in a prison sentence. World upside down."
"Police are increasingly letting knife and sex offenders escape prosecution if they say sorry, The Telegraph can reveal"

Meme - Culture War @CultureWar2020: ""You took a knee for BLM" "You wore rainbow for Pride" "But you dress for WAR with Concerned Parents" "Shame on YOU"  Smash 🔔to stay informed  #Hull #Stoke #StopTheBoats #SaveOurChildren #TwoTierKeir #Sunderland #Southport #Liverpool #Belfast #UK #Bradford #UniteTheKingdom #EnoughisEnough #Bolton #Bristol #Manchester"
"Rocks being pelted at police in Middlesbrough. Smash to stay informed #Hull #Stoke #StopTheBoats #SaveOurChildren #TwoTierKeir #Sunderland #Southport #Liverpool #Belfast #UK #Bradford #UniteTheKingdom"

Meme - Klaus Arminius @Klaus_Arminius: "UK: Two Immigrant cousins attacked a British man, cut his face and punctured his eye because he objected to them filming his girlfriend.  The court sentenced them to 200 hours community service and anger management sessions.  British men have literally went to 12+ months prison for “racist” posts but immigrants can attack Brits without any consequences."
"Cousins launch 'life changing' attack on man after filming his girlfriend in bar. Sahaar and Cyrus Malik turned on a man after he disapproved of his girlfriend being filmed"

“You Can’t Have A Phobia Of A Set Of Ideas” | New Islamophobia Definition For Debate By Keir Starmer - YouTube - "'The problem you've got  obviously with this islamophobia definition is that Islam is a religious  set of ideas about both the metaphysics  of reality, you know what, what is God? Is  there a God? Who is his messenger? Does he  have a son or not? Things like that. And  then a set of legal codes and a set of  social practices as to how to live your  life as well. Those are ideas and  those ideas can be praised, they can be  lived by, or they can be challenged. You can't have a phobia of a set of ideas. And  when you start having a definition of this, then you  start making it very difficult to criticise this. Now I'm not a Muslim, so I don't  necessarily think that the prophet  Muhammad had these revelations in the  year 632, 636.'
'But it doesn't make  you Islamophobic to question whether or  not they're worth listening to"
"Correct.  In the same way that I don't necessarily  believe in the full set of of Hindu  ideas or Christianity, or anything else'
'I mean  there are plenty of people who you can  find walking around the streets of  London or Britain uh who don't believe  in God of any kind. You know, does that make  you Islamophobic?'...
'My old boss [sp?] Zahawi just now. Born  in Baghdad, grew up there. His great grand  uncle was a poet. In the 1920s Baghdad  used to write poetry attacking the veil, the hijab and saying this is a  terribly backward thing, we don't need to  have this. If he could do that in the  1920s Baghdad, we should be able to have  conversations of things associated with  Islam and cultural things today'
'If you've got  a rule against people being racist,  that's fine. Leave it at that. Don't pick  out. that you have to have a special  second ruling for people who are Islamic  or people who are Hindus or people who  are you know Christians or people who  are you know I don't know um worshippers  of of the Pagan god. Um, you know, Odin. Or  whatever, you know they go to Stonehenge  every day.  You know, have just a regular  law if you wish which protects people  from being abused. But you don't have to  be specific about every single religion'
'No, and again the biggest people who  suffer from this are the many many  millions of British Muslims who don't  have any these sort of problematic ideas,  because they will be fighting against  the hardcore types in those communities,  and when they get gaslit by well-meaning  white liberal types... makes it more more difficult  for the moderates and the the Liberals  in those communities'...
'I know plenty of people who live  and operate and work in the Middle East , um people talk about how the Saudis um  the UAE, all of those countries in in  that particularly difficult part of the  world have kind of rejected um the crazy  um Islamic types, you know the the the  sort of Iranian type uh the you know  theocracy. Um and they're kicking them  all out and they're all coming here'"

Big Brother’s Censorship Will Harm Those They Claim to Protect - "One would think that the British government would have a little more self-awareness before going on about vague threats to surveil and censor the speech of its citizens, but they decided to make a real dog’s dinner of it. The response online was overwhelmingly negative, with many critical and mocking references to 1984 and the Declaration of Independence.  But however well-intentioned or misguided, they may not be alone in their sentiments. In fact, Americans are increasingly open to censorship and restrictions on their speech that are similar to what we have seen in Europe and elsewhere. So it’s worth looking at the current row in the UK to show how quickly what may seem well-intentioned can lead to harmful censorship and threaten individual liberty, democracy, and social progress...   But issues like misinformation or hate speech are not always black and white. As the past few years have shown, sometimes it’s the established narrative from governments and experts that is actually wrong, and we should be concerned about the potential discourse on important topics silenced in the process.  Such censorship has long been used to silence dissidents in totalitarian regimes, but even more worrying is that many democratic nations seem to be more comfortable with the idea the government can enforce the truth or stop hate. Indeed, research shows that democracies worldwide are increasingly censoring their citizens in a dangerous “free speech recession.” Speech laws aimed to “protect” certain groups may even make things worse. Vague hate speech laws will almost inevitably be turned against even those they are meant to protect. In 2012, a Muslim British teenager was convicted for aggressively criticizing the deaths of Afghan civilians at the hands of British soldiers. Pro-immigration, pro-trans medicine, pro-abortion, or pro-Muslim or Palestinian statements could be viewed by others as inciting hatred that is anti-British, anti-woman, anti-Christian, or anti-Jewish and Israeli. Censorship is always a double-edged sword that cannot be carefully wielded only by the “right” people at the “right” times.  And by policing thought crimes, the UK is preventing its citizens from using their words to express their views regarding a high-profile and emotionally charged issue. With no peaceful way to make their voice heard, some will turn to violence as the only remaining option."

UK Riots Show Expose Two-Tier Policing and a Two-Tier Judiciary - "Law enforcement’s response to the chaos has renewed claims of “two-tier policing,” the idea in the United Kingdom that the police treat right-wingers more severely than they do other groups. According to the British mainstream media, two-tier policing is a “far-right conspiracy theory,” a “myth,” a “trope,” and a “laughable” notion, even though such publications previously condemned the police force as irreparably biased in other ways. Despite the media’s narrative, the British increasingly believe “two-tier policing” exists: A recent YouGov poll in Britain found that a third of respondents think that “those of the far-right” are treated more strictly by the police, while over 20 percent said “climate activists” and “those of the far left” are treated more leniently. But regardless of whether there is two-tier policing targeting right-wing individuals, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests a two-tier judiciary in the United Kingdom, wherein speech or protest deemed dangerous is punished harshly while other behavior brings about sentences akin to a time-out on the playground.  The same judges who sentence rioters to time behind bars prescribe sunshine and an outdoor lifestyle to other criminals. This month, for example, Judge Mark Bury sentenced three men to over two years in prison each for violent disorder at a riot against immigration. Yet just a few weeks ago, Judge Bury advised Simon Pritchett, who possessed several hundred indecent images of children, to “get out more” because “what you have been doing over an 18-month period is downloading and retaining indecent images of children and extreme pornography images.” Rather than sentence Pritchett to prison, Bury suggested that he “get some fresh air and meet people.” After all, Pritchett lived in a coastal town. The judiciary is also severely punishing those whose conduct and speech might have facilitated the riots. Judge Benedict Kelleher, for instance, sentenced David Spring to 18 months in prison for threatening gestures toward police and joining chants of “who the f*** is Allah?” Kelleher told Spring that “what you did could and it seems did encourage others to engage in disorder,” and merited a punishment to deter others from similar conduct. Yet this very month, that same judge gave Ozzie Cush only a 46-week detention for assaulting a police officer at a demonstration. Cush already had two prior convictions related to criminal damage. In Kelleher’s court, it seems, blasphemous speech and threatening gestures toward the police deserve more punishment than actual physical attacks on them... Even online speech in relatively private settings prompts U.K. judges to issue prison time if that speech codes as right-wing. Meanwhile, speech at left-wing protests gets no such treatment. In 2022, Judge Tan Ikram sent James Watts to prison for 20 weeks after Watt sent memes mocking George Floyd to a group chat. Later, Ikram gave no punishment to three women who were charged under the Terrorism Act for attending a pro-Palestinian protest while wearing jackets that had images of Hamas-inspired paragliders — even though they were all found guilty. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ikram was caught liking a LinkedIn post that called for a “Free Palestine.”) Judges hand harsh sentences to criminals out of sympathy for their victims’ enduring trauma — provided that such trauma stems from racist speech, not sexual misconduct. Judge Rupert Lowe, for instance, sentenced Ryan Ferguson to nine months in jail for racially aggravated abuse due to comments he shouted at a football player. Yet Lowe gave no jail time to Nicholas Chapman, a doctor who repeatedly put his semen in coffee and gave it to a woman. Chapman claimed to have a medical condition that caused him to routinely ejaculate when using the bathroom, and that his semen wound up in the drinks because he didn’t properly wash his hands, a defense Lowe called “implausible.” Nevertheless, Lowe told Chapman in the course of his light sentencing that “you are an intelligent professional of previous good character with good references.” (The victim didn’t offer a positive reference; instead, she stated that “I have to accept that the mental and emotional trauma I have suffered throughout this will always remain with me in some way.”) In Britain, it seems that animals have more rights than women and children. Judge Michael Stokes gave a twelve-month prison sentence to Keith Littlewood, a farmer who admitted to hygiene and animal cruelty, telling him that “You have betrayed that duty towards your own animals.” Yet he gave no prison sentence to Adil Rashid, an 18-year-old Muslim who had sex with a 13-year-old girl whom he met online... Nor did Stokes give any prison time to Jamie Thompson, who had been filmed physically abusing a young girl and admitted to cruelty. Regarding this decision, Stokes explained that “defendants who are under severe stress or a genuine mental condition or disorder at the time of the offense should not be sent to prison.”   Indeed, the British courts evaluate the mental state of a defendant, which includes punishing perceived right-leaning thoughts harsher than behaviors associated with child predators... Maybe, just maybe, there isn’t a two-tier police or judiciary. Perhaps the United Kingdom’s courts are simply a casino where judges play sentencing roulette. David Walker, a man with 17 prior convictions for 23 offenses, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault against an emergency worker in 2022. Judge Bayliss did not send Walker behind bars, despite noting that “it’s against my better judgement.” Bayliss told Walker to “just go before I change my mind, count yourself very lucky indeed.” Certainly, there are people who get lucky in the British courts, and I’m ready to place bets: Anything — protest, speech, emojis, stickers, or perceived thoughts — that can be tenuously associated with the “far right” warrants time in a correctional facility to punish those who have committed wrong-think, and further warn everyone else"

Meme - GOV.UK @GOVUK: "Think before you post. *1984 Big Brother*"

pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "Judge Jeremy Richardson sentenced grandfather Peter Lynch to 2 years in prison for making “racist remarks” outside of a migrant hotel. Lynch has now committed suicide.  Richardson previously let a pedophile walk free because he considered it “cruel” to jail him."

Meme - "disclaimer, I don't condone violence in any way. I think the insidious identity politics espoused by the left are masking a bigger issue - class divide. I live in an underprivileged town in Essex. The streets I grew up on have changed beyond belief. There are Albanian and Somali drug gangs running amok, knife crime out of control, drugs dealt in our streets in broad daylight, and you no doubt saw the scenes from Southend last weekend. My teenage daughter can't go out with her friends as I did at her age. Men who don't speak English harass them. Her school has put out messages warning about it. For months, years, myself and my neighbours have been wondering how anyone could not want to challenge it. Why all Brits weren't as saddened and angry as us. Then yesterday, I went to Henley on Thames on a work event. I drove past rolling fields, public schools, yacht clubs and posh hotels. Saw little boys about my son's age walking together down country lanes holding a football, laughing (my son can't go to our local park to play football, as recently, two young boys have been robbed there at knifepoint). Driving along, gawping like a goldfish at the England I remember from my childhood, that I haven't seen in so long, I thought "no wonder". No wonder middle and upper classes chalk all this up to racism and hyperbole. No wonder they dismiss our concerns and write us off as unintelligent right wing scumbags. They've genuinely got no idea have they? Their towns and streets aren't dangerous, dirty, crime-ridden hellholes. No council is paying to create houses of multiple occupancy in areas where a square foot of land sets you back more than 7 flats will in a working class area. The divide is not in colour, not in race, this is a class war. And Keir Starmer has effectively declared war on the working class, treating us with contempt and disinterest. These riots aren't a reaction to the horrors of Southport, they're a culmination of years of anger, despair and disenfranchisement. The working class people of the UK have no voice, no agency and no representation. Keir Starmer's Two-Tier approach to enforcing law and order only provides further evidence of this and further fuel to the fire."

The Piper Perri Difference / Hugging yourself / Jack's sketch for Rose

Normal Person: *normal female reproductive system*
Piper Perri: *super long vagina reaching up to her breasts*

"When you don't have someone to hug, so you hug yourself *Woman holding legs in sexual position*

*Jack on Titanic shows Rose a sketch*
*Jack doggy styling Rose with Django Unchained face*
*Shocked Rose, grinning Jack*

Links - 17th November 2024 (1)

Bake Off sparks backlash as charity demands apology after 'harmful message' on show causes 'deep concern' for Channel 4 viewers - "charity Coeliac UK has since demanded an 'apology' from the show after the celebrities 'undermined the seriousness' of the disease."
???

YOU SAID IT: NDP politically irrelevant - "The once-proud NDP — which would never compromise on its ideology that formerly stood proudly for medicare, workers’ rights and ordinary Canadians — is now only about being Trudeau’s “yes man” until Singh’s federal pension tenure is realized. Singh announced nationally that the NDP would no longer support the awful Trudeau Liberal government and then, in the very next non-confidence vote, supported Trudeau like an obedient robot. Forget about NDP principles or a commitment he just made to all Canadians; Singh buckled like a tower of cheap champagne glasses to protect his own pension."

‘Not a bad thing’: Chinese students gave tours of National University of Singapore for cash | South China Morning Post - "Chinese postgraduate students were selling tours of the National University of Singapore (NUS) to tourists, amid unhappiness from local students over an influx of mainland visitors.  A listing of the two-hour tour, which has since been removed, was found on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu for 273 yuan (US$38). Thirty-one people had purchased the tour, which covered the Central Library, University Town and the NUS Museum, and left mostly positive reviews on Xiaohongshu."

'He ordered 30 plates of chicken rice': NUS students bemoan tourist crowds on campus - "What happens when a diner in front of you orders 30 plates of chicken rice?  Well, one National University of Singapore (NUS) student who found herself in this situation had to give up on her order, she said in response to a vox pop question posed by HeyKaki on the problems brought about by the influx of tourists, one which has disrupted life on the campus...   When asked how they deal with issues, two of the students said they will leave for school 30 minutes earlier than usual. A student added that she will eat lunch at about 2pm, after the peak period."

NTU, NUS students renting out hostel rooms illegally, some at almost double what uni charges - "Former NUS students who stayed in halls between 2017 and 2023 told ST that the phenomenon was common and one may find "three subletters per block".  A former head of a block at NUS' Eusoff Hall said some sublet their rooms because they want to participate in hall sports but do not want to pay for a room to do so. He added that those who rent from students might want to live on campus but do not want to participate in hall activities, usually a requirement to qualify for a room."

Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "When Robin Williams appeared on ‘Inside the Actors Studio’ in 2001, an audience member developed a hernia from laughing too hard and had to be taken away in an ambulance."

One Ladybug's Surprise Appearance During A 59-Year-Old Man's Colonoscopy - "As it turns out, ladybugs aren’t the only beetle capable of surviving (in the intact corpse sense) a trip down colon lane. In a series of tweets, gastrointestinal specialist Dr Keith Siau shared several case studies where cockroaches had also been discovered during colonoscopies, proving that even with our advanced science and medicine we remain – sometimes, quite literally – at one with nature."

Meme - @meintobluberilhu: "I sent him like 104 reels while he's asleep rn
HE REPLIED TO ALL 104 REELS INDIVIDUALLY STOP"
Has @SeaweeedBrain_: "love hits crazy when you're both unemployed"

To Avoid Killing Their Pollinators, Venus Fly Traps Put Their Flowers Far Away - "Hank Green recently shared this cool factoid on Twitter: “Venus fly traps have to put their flowers really far away from their traps so they don’t accidentally kill their pollinators and I love it so much.”"

Meme - "You see a puddle I see a cool location *girl having photo taken while on road in puddle*"
"I see a ring worm infection"

kelly kapowski on X - "In 8th grade we had to turn in a weekly journal and the day after I turned in one about the kid I had a crush on in class my teacher redid the seating chart and put us next to each other real wing woman work"

Meme - *Europe*
"red countries. Road distances are shown from furthest to nearest city
blue countries. Road distances are shown from nearest to furthest city"

Harris on X - "Rather than buying that Starbucks for the person behind you, call a local school and pay down a child’s overdue lunch account. The person behind you can afford their own coffee."

Manager Proves HR System Is Auto-Rejecting Candidates Using His Own Resume - "The ATS, or applicant tracking system, has become the bane of every job seeker's existence, basically making submitting a job app the digital equivalent of balling up your resume and hurling it into the ocean like Gob Bluth in "Arrested Development."... The manager posted their story in a comment on a separate Reddit post in which a job seeker from another company lamented a "world record rejection" after applying for a job. Both emails — one containing the confirmation receipt of their application and the other their rejection from the job — arrived at 10:56 a.m.  Obviously, there is no possible way that their application was actually reviewed by anything besides a software product with requirements that are entirely too stringent and inscrutable, which is absolutely infuriating on its face. But it may well be that the ATS in question was simply making a deeply stupid error... When the manager brought the issue to upper management, "they fired half of the HR department in the following weeks." It turned out the entire problem resulted from a typographical error with enormous consequences. The manager works in the tech space and was trying to hire developers. But HR had set up the system to look for developers with expertise in not only the wrong development software but a development software THAT DOESN'T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE.  "They were looking for an AngularJS developer," he wrote, "while we were looking for an Angular one (different frameworks, similar names)." AngularJS was discontinued in 2010. In 2010!  "Since the [ATS] was auto-rejecting profiles without AngularJS in it we literally lost all possible candidates," they explained. "The truly infuriating part was that I consistently talked to them asking for progress and they always told me that they had some candidates that didn't pass the first screening processes (which was false).""

Meme - Woman: "I'VE NEVER BEEN OUT WITH A WHISTLE BEFORE. I'M HAVING SUCH A GREAT TIME!"
Whistle: "ME TOO!"
Woman: "THAT'S ODD, THIS TASTES FUNNY.. SO WHAT KIND OF WHISTLE ARE YOU, AGAIN?"
Whistle: "FINISH YOUR DRINK."

Labour's tax raid on private school fees is in CHAOS - "Labour's tax raid on private tuition fees is in disarray as school heads have been unable to register for VAT on the official UK tax website. Schools logging on have been told they must have a ‘company number’ to register, but because they are charities they do not have one. It left schools spending hours trying to navigate the system via HMRC’s live webchat, with one adviser even admitting: ‘we don’t seem to have the systems in place’... Labour says the controversial tax will pay for 6,500 extra teachers for the state sector. It says private schools should absorb some or all of the cost so that it is not passed on to parents via fee rises. However, many schools have already said they will have to raise fees, and many families will not be able to afford it. Tens of thousands of pupils are expected to be forced from their schools to find places in the state sector, creating added cost for the taxpayer."

Coddled affluent professional on X - "Defective rich kids shouldn’t have fake careers, try to be Good People, or otherwise put on a show of bourgeois respectability.  They should have coke habits, dress up like Nazis for Halloween like Prince Harry,  and, when they turn 30, lose money with a poorly run vanity business like a bar or art gallery.  They should be banned from journalism, NGOs, activism, and other performative, fake work."

Meme - NPC: "Who radicalized you?"
Normal person: "No one. You're so far left that you've been brainwashed to think I'm radical."

Americans Grow Increasingly Dependent on Government Payments - "An old saying has it that he who takes the king's coin becomes the king's man. The idea is that rulers expect obedience in return for money disbursed. That has important implications in a country founded on the ideal of independence from intrusive government but whose citizens are increasingly dependent on the public teat. With taxes collected from some repurposed as transfer payments to other members of the public, a growing share of Americans are becoming the king's men.   "Income from government transfers is the fastest-growing major component of Americans' personal income," according to a September report from the bipartisan Economic Innovation Group (EIG). "Nationally, Americans received $3.8 trillion in government transfers in 2022, accounting for 18 percent of all personal income in the United States. That share has more than doubled since 1970."  As of 1970, the report's authors found, people in less than 1 percent of counties in the United States received a quarter or more of personal incomes from transfers...   The significant rise in the share of personal income represented by government payments occurred because they are no longer targeted at just the "most economically distressed." The biggest growth in transfer payments comes in the form of entitlement programs linked to old age and retirement...   The EIG authors worry that growing reliance on transfer payments creates pressure for higher taxes that "could choke off the very economic activity that finances transfers." They're concerned the situation promotes stagnation as people come to value the security of regular checks over taking risks and building businesses that will create future prosperity.   At least as worrisome is that the cash flows create a client–patron relationship between Americans who receive government payments and the politicians who create and administer such programs. It's a relationship that empowers the political class by eroding the economic independence of the people over whom they wield authority. It's difficult to say "no" to those on whom you depend for handouts, and it's not obvious that many office-seekers, or voters, want to alter that dynamic."

If the face fits: predicting future promotions from police cadets’ facial traits - "Facial traits are the primary driver of subject perceptions of leadership ability, and those perceptions successfully predict promotional success later in the cadets’ careers. When selecting for leadership potential based on police cadet photographs, respondents predict correct promotional choices at levels well above chance as measured by an AUC score of .70. Further, respondents’ evaluations successfully discriminate both between no promotion and lieutenant promotion, and sergeant versus lieutenant promotions.
Promoting the most capable police officers is a critical feature of public service. Our findings cast a degree of doubt on the purportedly meritocratic foundations of police promotion and selection. Extra-legal information, such as facial features, predicts later promotional success."
Of course, it couldn't possibly be that certain facial features are correlated with other traits that get people promoted, like job performance, because we all know that phrenology is pseudoscience

Meme - Delusional Takes @DelusionPosting: "This is in response to someone's brother committing suicide by the way. 194,000 likes..."
p. @silverwayss: "It really be like this"
"Men without women: *despair* Women without men: *happy*"
"Bad" Billy Pratt @ @KILLT...: "The reality of being an incel"
We're still told that misandry is a myth

Far-left ‘Mother Jones’ editor accuses airline of ‘Christian nationalism’ after flight attendant wishes passengers a ‘blessed’ night - "The editor-in-chief of the far-left "Mother Jones" publication declared on Friday that it was an example of "creeping Christian nationalism" when a flight attendant on an airline wished her and others to have a "blessed" evening.  Clara Jeffery, the EIC of the left-wing outlet, wrote about her apparent experience in a post: "Creeping Christian nationalism alert: Alaska Airlines flight attendant just wished us a 'blessed' night as we landed in SFO (!) to groans. Other adjectives that would have sufficed: great, awesome, fabulous, amazing, fantastic." As of Saturday morning, the post had over 2 million views on X, with many, even those on the left, roundly criticizing the editor's remark about her apparent experience with the flight attendant.   In the replies, YIMBYs for Harris cofounder Armand Domalewski wrote "Respectfully, I’m a pretty left leaning guy and I wish folks a blessed day fairly often. It’s just a nice thing to say."... User Peter Henlein wrote, "What do you say to a person when they sneeze around you?" to poke fun at was widely seen as an overreaction."
This is why we can't have nice things
Clearly, the War on Christmas is a right wing conspiracy theory
These are the same people who say things like "The Holy month of Ramadan"

Coddled affluent professional on X - "It’s really been a lost decade, culturally and intellectually. We put the midwits, the censors, and the mentally ill in charge and everything ground to a halt. There’s been some technical progress but only in fields too complex for the iconoclast midwits to properly vandalize."

Thread by @Paracelsus1092 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Any discussion of Mesoamerican archaeology has to be mindful that this one guy - Brigído Lara - managed to forge around 40,000 ceramic objects, manufactured so perfectly they fooled museum curators and researchers for decades. He may be responsible for forging virtually all the Totonac pottery on record, opening up not just the possibility that some artwork might be fake, but that everything ever written about this culture is nonsense. To make matters worse, no one knows whether Lara is lying about the objects he claims. This piece for example, depicting Ehecatl, the Mesoamerican wind god, is supposed to be one of his. But it is so perfect that curators think he's faking that this is a fake. The piece is old enough that Lara would have been a child when he made it, at the earliest, but he knows so much about how it was made that some have suspected he was trained in the art of ceramic forgery - he might be the apprentice to an older master forger.   In 1910, Leopoldo Batres published Antiquedades Mejicanas Falsificadas: Falsificacion y Falsificadores, the first book-length study of forgery in Mexican antiques, "It offers an eyewitness account of a work-shop of forgers located near the pyramids of Teotihuacan" Faking archaeological artefacts occurred on a near industrial scale in pre 1910 Mexico. The book has many pictures of forger's workshops and vendors plying their wares. One academic response to Lara's massive output of forged pottery has been to consider them 'original interpretations', and try to find some value in them as pieces of art. Lara is not alone though, although he seems particularly gifted. Entire museum collections, such as the Jubaozhai Museum in Hebei, have been suspected of being fakes. Producing these objects may employ around 250,000 people in China alone."

Emil O W Kirkegaard on X - "Interestingly, there are 3 races/subspecies of Bonobo chimpanzees. Their genetic distances are actually comparable to human populations despite all of them inhabiting a relatively small part of Africa. They even seem to have split about 150kya."
Deep genetic substructure within bonobos

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""SAT scores just reflect zip codes" is probably dead.  A new study used a sample of 760,000 military children whose families were randomly assigned to different counties/zips and found living in a +1 SD county or zip code for twenty years upped scores by just 0.05 or 0.19 d:
That 1 SD gap between Blacks and Whites? It's not explained by Blacks living in about 0.6 SD worse neighborhoods. Maybe about 10% is.  That's probably to much though, because the instrumental variable analysis suggested the sign of the effect on SAT scores was negative!
The authors had this to say on the negative estimated effect on SAT totals:  Looking closely, all of the causal estimates of place effects on SAT scores were at best marginally significant, unlike the effects on attained income, college attendance, and earnings.
The paper is worth a read. It is much less reassuring about impacts on SAT scores than it is about impacts on other aspects of SES. Those effects are small but meaningful, and thankfully not too heterogeneous by group, but that is realistic!"

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Achievement gaps do not simply reflect geographic sorting.  This fact has been known for more than a century now, but some people still don't get it.  Short🧵
First: achievement gaps exist within the same schools. This is not just true for race, it is also true for class. When it comes to district-level family incomes by group, we see that intercepts differ.  In other words, even when lower-performing groups are wealthier, they tend to do worse than higher-performing groups. If you're reading this, you probably know that this replicates the results for rearing household income. Parental education. And attained education
Consider Reardon, Kalogrides & Shores (2019). They found that even in districts where lower-performing groups had higher SES than Whites, they still tended to perform worse.  In this picture, 79% of the mean Black-White gap is independent of SES. At the metro level, 62% was.
It is a pernicious myth that test scores and achievement gaps are mere reflections of geography and that geography plays a major causal role in test scores.  The truth is that their association primarily reflects selection."

Crémieux on X - "Some people mistakenly believe tests just reflect your zip code. Differences in student achievement between classrooms are larger than the differences between schools, states, or school districts."
Breaking the Curve: Promises and Pitfalls of Using NAEP Data to Assess the State Role in Student Achievement

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "There are people who desperately want this to be untrue🧵  One example of this came up earlier this year, when a "Professor of Public Policy and Governance" accused other people of being ignorant about SAT scores because, he alleged, high schools predicted college grades better. The thread in question was, ironically, full of irrelevant points that seemed intended to mislead, accompanied by very obvious statistical errors.  For example, one post in it received a Community Note for conditioning on a collider.
But let's ignore the obvious things. I want to focus on this one: the idea that high schools explain more of student achievement than SATs  The evidence for this? The increase in R^2 going from a model without to a model with high school fixed effects  This interpretation is bad. The R^2 of the overall model did not increase because high schools are more important determinants of student achievement. This result cannot be interpreted to mean that your zip code is more important than your gumption and effort in school.  If we open the report, we see this:
Students from elite high schools and from disadvantaged ones receive similar results when it comes to SATs predicting achievement. If high schools really explained a lot, this wouldn't be the case.  What we're seeing is a case where R^2 was misinterpreted.
The reason the model R^2 blew up was because there's a fixed effect for every high school mentioned in this national-level dataset  That means that all the little differences between high schools are controlled—a lot of variation!—so the model is overfit, explaining the high R^2 This professor should've known better for many reasons.  For example, we know there's more variation between classrooms than between school districts when it comes to student achievement. As another example, we know that achievement gaps exist along the whole continuum of school and district quality.  If the issue was really zip codes, high schools, and so on, this shouldn't be the case. The other thing this professor should've known is that high school is biased! GPAs are biased too!  The bias in GPAs has actually been exploited: elite high schools inflate grades and don't report class ranks, so students appear better than they are. But you know what isn't a biased tool for admissions? Just one thing: test scores."

i/o on X - "73% of Boomer males: "No matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me."
72% of Gen Z females: "Mental illness is an important part of my identity.""
Phil on X - "Stoicism has been replaced with victimhood."
Colin Wright on X - "This hyperfixation on "identity" really defines our time. The first time I knew something odd was afoot was around 2010 when my (then) girlfriend was upset about something Richard Dawkins said, causing her to claim that she no longer "identified" as an atheist. "What, so you now believe in God?" I asked.  "No, I still don't believe in God, I just don't identify as an atheist," she responded.   This was utterly baffling to me, as I never viewed atheism as an identity, but rather a label that simply described my lack of belief in God/gods. I still don't understand it. But this highlighted for me the odd and now common phenomenon of the split many people now assert between what they are and how they identify."
Left wing ideology leads to mental illness, and it glorifies it too

Meme - the Rich @Duderichy: "there’s a pervasive idea that when a man gets rich he’s likely to leave his wife for a younger woman  but the higher a man’s income the lower the chance of divorce"

Companies are firing Gen Z workers soon after hiring them. What’s behind their job market struggles? - "one in six employers were reluctant to hire Gen Z workers mainly due to their reputation for being entitled and easily offended. Moreover, more than half said that this generation, which refers to people born between 1997 and the early 2010s, lacks a strong work ethic, struggles with communication, doesn't handle feedback well, and is generally unprepared for the demands of the workforce. Holly Schroth, senior lecturer at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, explained that Gen Z's focus on extracurricular activities to boost their college competitiveness rather than gaining job experience has led to “unrealistic expectations” about the workplace and how to deal with their bosses. “They [Gen Z] don't know basic skills for social interaction with customers, clients, and co-workers, nor workplace etiquette”... Around six in ten companies included in the survey reported firing a recent university graduate they hired this year... some of their Gen Z workers struggled to manage their workload, were frequently late, and did not dress or speak appropriately. A separate report from April found that Generation Z workers were overly reliant on parental support during their job search. According to the survey that was conducted by ResumeTemplates and which included responses from nearly 1,500 young job seekers, 70 per cent admitted to asking their parents for help in the job search process. Another 25 per cent even brought their parents to interviews, while many others had their parents submit job applications and write resumes for them."

Meditation can be harmful – and can even make mental health problems worse - "A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month. According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror. Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms."

Number of pubs may reach ‘critically low’ levels with less than 1,000 set to stay - "Britain may have less than 1,000 pubs by 2074. The number of pubs in the country has fallen significantly in the last decade – from 41,015 operating in 2013 to the 38,175 with their doors open in 2023."

Links - 16th November 2024 (2 - Justin Trudeau)

Trudeau resignation would be in Canada’s best interest: Liberal MP - "Liberal MP Sean Casey says he thinks it is in the nation’s best interest for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down in order to avoid a Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre... Casey confirmed he is one of up to 30 Liberal MPs who have signed on to an internal document calling on Trudeau to step aside... Last week saw four more cabinet ministers tell Trudeau they won’t run for re-election, adding to a growing cabinet exodus and other MP resignations this year... he has not directly heard that any of his colleagues oppose the idea."

Geoff Russ: Trudeau's DEI foreign policy a laughable failure - "Canada has tolerated the presence of the Sikh separatist Khalistani movement in our cities for decades. The Khalistani movement is a shell of its former self within India, and like so many other diasporas in Canada, extremism is far more prevalent abroad than it is in the motherland. There is no excuse for Canada allowing the Khalistani’s to organize and operate with impunity here. While not every Khalistani sympathizer has committed violent crime for the cause, the movement has been rife with terrorism since its inception. Under no circumstances should Canada allow itself become a staging ground or front for foreign conflicts and insurgencies that we have no stake in... Canada’s goals regarding relations with India should be first and foremost about business, not trying to flex the myth of Canadian soft power. As for China, Global Affairs still describes its mission in Beijing as being rooted in “respect for diversity” and “international norms and values,” as if the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated it cares for either. These differences make some of Justin Trudeau’s previous attempts to improve cultural relations appear that much more ridiculous. During his 2018 visit to India, Trudeau put on costumes that Indian observers said were badly overwrought, an awkward attempt at Bhangra dancing that was so hideous, he seems to have retired his moves permanently. The Trudeau foreign policy doctrine has always emphasized issues that go beyond simply trade. His government has very plainly stated their wish to spread progressive values abroad, under labels like the “Feminist International Assistance Policy” intended to help ensure Papuans and Djiboutians can get abortions and fight climate change... Exporting these values via foreign aid is a strategy sprouted from the same tree as George W. Bush era neoconservatives, who also believed in spreading liberal democracy with Abrams tanks and stealth bombers. At least the neocons were able to achieve regime change, disastrous as it was. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that spreading Liberal Party values abroad has resulted in a more safe or democratic world... Parading as such has been expensive for Canadian taxpayers. For example, almost $500 million has been given to Haiti since 2022 as part of the Trudeau doctrine. The Caribbean country is a complete disaster and a failed state, with no elected officials to speak of, and machete-wielding militias lording over the streets. Funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the country prior to its political collapse in May only delayed the inevitable."

Justin Trudeau among Canada's best — and worst — PMs: survey - "Since we started tracking this question, the proportion of Canadians who think Justin Trudeau is the worst recent prime minister has grown every year, from 18 per cent in 2020, to 22 per cent in 2021, to 29 per cent in 2022, to 30 per cent in 2023 and to 38 per cent this year. The perceptions of middle-aged Canadians help illustrate the gravity of the situation. In 2020, Canadians aged 35-54 were more likely to select Harper as the worst recent prime minister (25 per cent) than Justin Trudeau (21 per cent). Since then, Harper has shed 14 points (11 per cent) and Trudeau has gained 24 points (45 per cent)."

No ‘time to waste’: Jean Chrétien's former right-hand man asks Justin Trudeau to step down - "Eddie Goldenberg, who was Chrétien’s right-hand man for decades and served as chief of staff and senior policy advisor during his years in power, penned a piece called “Justin Trudeau’s Obligation to Canada” on Friday in which he argues that an undefeated Trudeau could be more useful in leading the fight against separatists in Quebec... Goldenberg’s call for action is coming at a time when dozens of inside voices in the Liberal caucus are calling for Trudeau to resign... It is not the first time that someone in Chrétien’s entourage has called on Trudeau to step down. Last year, Prince Edward Island Senator Percy Downe, who served as Chrétien’s chief of staff before Goldenberg, wrote his own opinion piece calling on Trudeau to resign and to let another leader safeguard the party’s policies and bring the Liberals back to the centre."

Pierre Poilievre | Facebook - "Trudeau says he is censoring the internet to stop conspiracy theories and disinformation. This week, Trudeau MP Mark Gerretsen had to apologize for spreading a false and defamatory conspiracy theory about a Canadian woman. The best way for NDP Liberals to combat false conspiracy theories is to stop spreading them."

John Ivison: Seeds for a Liberal revolt against Trudeau were planted long ago - "Even in Trudeau’s honeymoon period after the 2015 election victory, there was grumbling in the Liberal ranks. New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, for example, voted against his government’s small business tax in 2017, long before he called for the prime minister to resign this year . Back then, there was a feeling that Trudeau had single-handedly resurrected the Liberal party, politically and financially, and he would remain leader for as long as he wanted. That spell was broken by the SNC-Lavalin affair in early 2019, when Trudeau presided over a mess that saw him lose two ministers (Jody Wilson Raybould and Jane Philpott), his most trusted adviser (Gerald Butts), the country’s most senior public servant (Michael Wernick), his reputation for probity and his party’s lead in the polls. From that point on, the Liberals have leaked support, and discontent in the caucus has grown. The charge, even among many of his own MPs, is that he abandoned the rising anxiety of “the middle class, and those seeking to join it” to focus on identity politics. When I wrote my book on Trudeau in 2019 , Liberal MPs complained then about the “relentless attempt to woo left-of-centre voters … (even though) we’re the party of the middle.” Trudeau had promised to forge consensus and bridge partisan divides; his autobiography was even titled: Common Ground. Yet he found there was political advantage to be gained in targeting anyone deemed privileged. Another Liberal MP at the time scoffed at the idea that the previous Harper Conservative government was more guilty of playing the politics of division. “That’s nonsense. We’re more polarizing than they ever were. I don’t think that’s sunk in yet. I don’t think Justin intuits that — or if he does, he thinks it’s worth the gamble and thinks he can win with that kind of polarization,” the MP said. The SNC affair ended Trudeau’s aura of infallibility and disturbed what John Stuart Mill once called “the deep slumber of decided opinion.” One Liberal MP said that the disappointment in caucus was palpable. “This was a crisis and Trudeau was found wanting,” he said. “The caucus is united in a desire to get re-elected. It is not necessarily united in a desire to get re-elected behind him.”... The immediate danger to Trudeau is probably past, but it will bubble up again if he persists with his messianic belief that success will be achieved by “ doubling down on the things we know are going to get us to better , which is more protection of the environment, more inclusion of people,” as he recently declared. All the data suggest voters want change, not more of the same — starting with a switch at the very top... Yet there are no signs that Trudeau is prepared to listen to his backbench. Unlike the Conservatives, who adopted Michael Chong’s Reform Act, the Liberals voted down the proposal that allows 20 per cent of the caucus to call for a leadership review. Just as the Sun King believed he ruled by divine right, the leader of the modern Liberal party enjoys an age of centralized absolutism that is built to resist change."

ANALYSIS: The Liberal revolt is about Trudeau, communications, and the carbon tax - "Liberal MPs were told at that 2022 caucus that there was a plan to turn things around. They were told the same thing when they met last month in Nanaimo, B.C., for this year’s summer caucus retreat. Indeed, applause could be heard from the closed-door meeting in the room at the conference centre in downtown Nanaimo when Trudeau’s director of strategic communications, Max Valiquette, presented his marketing plan for the months ahead. Now many of those MPs complain that nothing was done after the St. Andrews meetings. And nothing has been done since Nanaimo. The complainers say there has been no promised communications campaign, no change in policies, and no change in the way the PM and his senior aides interact with caucus. Conservative campaigner Cole Hogan, a principal at gt&co, tracks the amount of money each party spends on Facebook advertising, figures which Facebook itself discloses about all political parties. For the week ending Oct. 5, the Conservatives spent $114,569 on Facebook ads compared to $3,086 by the Liberals and $1,240 by the NDP... while Liberal MPs were promised some sort of marketing campaign to boost their fortunes, the Conservatives produced slick TV ads that aired on legacy television networks. The Liberal response? Trudeau did a podcast with one of his own backbenchers and made an appearance on a U.S. late-night TV show... Those who want a leadership change tend to be ‘blue’ Liberals, the kind who might have supported Paul Martin or John Manley in ancient leadership races. Some believe someone like François-Philippe Champagne, who represents Jean Chrétien’s old Shawinigan riding and serves as Trudeau’s minister for innovation, science and industry, would immediately improve the Liberals’ fortunes if he were leader. It’s not just leaders that need to change, say some of the complainers, it’s time also to abandon some cherished policies including the carbon tax... several progressive-minded politicians across the country have already decided that it is impossible to campaign and win on a federal carbon price. New Democrat premiers Wab Kinew in Manitoba and David Eby in B.C. have called on the feds to scrap the carbon tax. Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck is campaigning in the provincial election underway in her province against a carbon tax. And federal NDP Jagmeet Singh, too, is now wavering on the principle of pricing carbon. In New Brunswick Liberal leader Susan Holt has also called on Ottawa to cancel any hikes in the carbon tax. Now, there are members of Trudeau’s own caucus — largely MPs from English-speaking Canada — who think it’s time to do what Polievre’s Conservatives have been constantly calling for and “Axe the Tax.”... one of those MPs seeking a leadership change said part of the problem is that there is almost no one seeking a revolt who will say so when the TV cameras are pointed at them. Someone, this MP said, needs to either hold a press conference or organize a sustained “storm the microphone” campaign at the next Liberal caucus meeting which, given the ‘break week’ ahead, is not likely to occur until Oct. 23... MPs who spoke to Global News said Trudeau is now on the verge of losing the support of the Ontario and Quebec caucuses. As MPs from those two provinces knock on doors soliciting support, they say that they get positive reviews about the work the government has done (spurred on by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP) on national pharmacare and national dental care but any support Liberals might earn on those policies evaporates when it comes to the leader. “He’s not just unpopular,” one Liberal said. “He is strongly disliked.”"

Why Liberal backbenchers are revolting over the carbon tax - "The nine-year tenure of the Trudeau government has featured remarkably few MPs publicly breaking with the government line. This is a distinct contrast from earlier Liberal governments. Even before Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was ultimately shown the door by a low-level caucus revolt, he oversaw MPs who frequently broke with him on everything from criminal justice to abortion. When any visible dissension has shown itself among members of the Trudeau government, it’s usually been answered with near-immediate consequences. Most recently, Quebec Liberal MP Anthony Housefather was cycled out of his job as a parliamentary secretary soon after being the sole dissenting voice on a Liberal update to the Officials Languages Act."

Tasha Kheiriddin: Liberals play diaspora politics to hide their failure to address foreign interference - "On the surface, they provide a great distraction from the weekend’s attempted internal coup on the prime minister. The story of a revolt among Liberal MPs , thirty of which apparently signed a letter asking the PM to quit, hit the news cycle on Saturday. Then, presto: on Monday, the RCMP dropped its bombshell, allowing the PM to take to the airwaves and sound all grave and solemn and prime-minister like, defending Canadian sovereignty. Hmm. But that would be too obvious. So let’s look at what else is going on in Ottawa, namely the Hogue Commission on Foreign interference. On Friday, the Commission heard from Public Safety Minister Bill Blair that his office sat for 54 days on a warrant to investigate Ontario Liberal MPP Michael Chan, accused of doing China’s bidding in Canada. Blair offered “no explanation” for the delay, and neither did his chief of staff. Three days later, boom: India stands accused of being the major agent of transnational repression in Canada. China, who? And the focus switches from the Liberal government’s failings to the murderous machinations of New Delhi. And here’s the kicker: who is responsible for ensuring that the RCMP is “effective, accountable and addresses the government’s priorities?” You guessed it: Bill Blair, the minister of public safety... I’m not saying India isn’t engaged in transnational repression, but the timing of this exposure is highly convenient for both the minister and the government. It’s also highly convenient for China, which relishes any chance to bash India, its chief rival for dominance of the Indo Pacific."

Why is Justin Trudeau so unpopular? - "back in the spring of 2023, we wanted to know whether Trudeau’s unpopularity was more rampant among male voters.  “Yes,” was the answer back then. Today, that gender disparity has mostly disappeared. “Men and women now feel pretty much the same about Trudeau,” Abacus CEO David Coletto says (and he doesn’t mean this in a good way)...   The top two reasons cited for negative impressions of Trudeau were disappointment in what he’s done, with 59 per cent calling that the top reason, and his management of the federal budget, with 55 per cent saying that was the major reason they didn’t hold Trudeau in high esteem.  “I think the biggest takeaway is that this may not be as personal as we assume,” Coletto said... Abacus offered respondents a choice of 11 ways to describe why they were rating Trudeau so negatively. On top of the ones already cited, they included his foreign, social and climate policies, a sense that he’s “out of touch,” or the regard in which he is held by other world leaders."

‘Emboldened’ Trudeau heads into Liberal caucus retreat - "Trudeau believes he is the solution.  In public and in private, Trudeau has expressed his determination to stay at the helm of his party through to the next election.  And he believes he now has most of his caucus behind him... the death of the NDP co-operation deal doesn’t bother the prime minister or many of those around him.  If anything, after his summer listening tour, Trudeau is, surprisingly, “more emboldened,” said one Liberal...   Trudeau, several said, is deeply concerned about the rise of a right-wing populism that threatens Canadian social programs and cohesion. He sees Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as an agent of that.  Some said Trudeau believes he must stay on to counter Poilievre, even in the face of polls showing he is leading the Liberal party to likely disaster.  “He’s not getting the message. He thinks he’s the only one who can fight for the progressive agenda in Canada against the big, evil Conservatives,” said one...   Trudeau also thinks that most of the negative spin about his leadership comes from “groupthink” in the Ottawa press gallery.  That there is an unending stream of negative stories is certainly true, because there is a seemingly endless stream of polls documenting the mood of Canadians... A clear sign that Trudeau’s public relations and security staff worried he would encounter protesters were Trudeau’s carefully sanitized public itineraries. Early in the summer, his office stopped issuing timely public notices of where the prime minister would be, sometimes concealing Trudeau’s whereabouts until after an event was over.  And there was one telling, unscripted moment in Trudeau’s summer travels.  In Sault Ste-Marie, a steelworker declined to shake Trudeau’s hand, complained about taxes, the lack of a family doctor, the cost of dental care and about the “lazy neighbour” who doesn’t work but lives the same life he, the ordinary worker, does.  Trudeau engaged the man and quickly tried to talk his way out of the awkward encounter, but the worker wanted no part of it and looked forward to Trudeau not being around “in another year.”... So will Trudeau offer a major course correction — say, on the Middle East, the economic direction of the country, or the carbon pricing regime that has caused him endless political headaches? Don’t expect that, said several.  Trudeau plans to stay on the same track, even if the prospect of a federal election before October 2025 suddenly looms large. Certainly, Trudeau’s favourite catchphrase is, “We will continue to …”"

‘He’s not getting the message’: Justin Trudeau shrugs off the naysayers as he heads into a Liberal caucus retreat : r/canada - "So in a nutshell: These people appear to believe that those who oppose them are literally evil, that the negativity around them and their governance is driven by the Ottawa Press Gallery, and that they don’t need to do anything different except improve their messaging and do even more of the things that cause people to hate them. Yet at the same time, they also understand the need to insulate Trudeau from the very people he seeks to lead again because they know full well he’d have endless encounters like the one in Sault Ste. Marie.  This is a galactic level of self-delusion, just a total reality distortion field surrounding him and everyone around him. It’s not going to end well.  And it would also be nice if we could stop portraying our political opponents in this country as evil. We might disagree with them or their policies, but I think we all understand that they are doing what they think (erroneously, on Trudeau’s part) are what’s best for Canada.  I cannot wait for this gasbag to receive the absolute shit-kicking at the polls he’s going to, if only so I never have to watch that smug face of his deliver yet another lie or any more gaslighting."
"This is what he's been doing his entire time as PM. He's used divisive politics about everything, his way is the only way forward and if you don't follow it you're a nazi/racist/right wing/etc."
"He's been pushing the Post-Nation State narrative since he became PM. Now he's suddenly concerned about 'cohesion? Even Sophie got tired of his shit."
"Judging by the comments of die hard Trudeau supporters this is exactly what they think. They victimized themselves so much they believe every single criticism is an act of right wing propaganda.  For the last 9 years they have laughed at Maga people yelling about fake news. But at the same time we can see them in every single thread in this sub yelling about alt right American propaganda.  Oh how the tables have turned."
"The guy’s been surrounded by sycophants literally his entire life, he was groomed for the Liberal leadership position because of his last name and not because of his pedigree as a leader. It’s probably very difficult to swallow the fact that life outside the yes men bubble is not sunshine and rainbows."

‘He’s not getting the message’: Justin Trudeau shrugs off the naysayers as he heads into a Liberal caucus retreat : r/canada - "The LPC divisive politics are incredible frustrating. Between his government and his supporters (particularly online), they drag American politics into Canadian ones constantly, and then turn around and say their opponents are doing it.   It’s gaslighting at its finest and for me was one of the earliest signs that they are full of shit."
‘He’s not getting the message’: Justin Trudeau shrugs off the naysayers as he heads into a Liberal caucus retreat : r/canada - "I freaking hate how he fear mongers people by saying the conservatives will remove abortion rights and the left just eats it up"
"Look south. The Democrats are trying to tell people to fear a DT presidency even though he was the President 4 years ago.... and they still have democracy.  People eat shit up all the time"
"the SCoC decided abortion was constitutional in 1989, no party can circumvent that with a law. It’s unbelievable how much you guys lie."
‘He’s not getting the message’: Justin Trudeau shrugs off the naysayers as he heads into a Liberal caucus retreat : r/canada - "This put into words something I've been thinking for a long time but had trouble articulating. They think entirely in terms of intentions rather than outcomes and then conflate any criticism of the outcome with a criticism of the intention, meaning you are an immoral and selfish person who's opinion can be discarded.  Meanwhile more and more of our tax dollars are thrown at bloated, ineffective programs that do nothing for the majority of Canadian as the value of our labour and buying power continue to shrink."

Alex Zoltan on X - "TRUDEAU: "A mosque was vandalized and we will call out Islamophobia as unacceptable every chance we get."
ALSO TRUDEAU: "Burning down a Catholic church is fully understandable.""

Meme - *Two-fAaced Justin Trudeau*
One face: "No government, politician, or man should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body."
Other face: If you choose to be unvaxxed you are a racist misogynist."

Meme - "Under Stephen Harper, Canada's middle class was considered the "richest in the world," richer than in the United States. SOURCE: Global News, April 22, 2014
After eight years of Trudeau Liberal "leadership," half of Canada's provinces are poorer than West Virginia. SOURCES: Statistics Canada; US Bureau of Economic Analysis"

Liberals' 2 billion trees promise 'overrated': Report - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to plant 2 billion trees across the country to offset increased carbon emissions won’t have an impact on fighting climate change, according to a report. A spring bulletin from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society says the program was “overrated,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter... Promised during the last election campaign, the Liberals proposed the planting of 2 billion trees within a decade. However, the program is behind schedule, according to a government note entitled, “Two Billion Trees Questions And Answers.”"

Jake Fuss: Ignore the Trudeau talking points—Canada is a highly indebted country - "The Trudeau government has claimed that Canada “continues to have an enviable fiscal and debt position relative to international peers” because we have the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. But this is misleading. In reality, Canada is actually a highly indebted country relative to our international peers.  The government’s claim originates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which notes that Canada has the lowest level of net debt (as a share of its economy) among G7 countries including Germany, Italy, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. But this specific measure of debt subtracts financial assets from total government debt.  Here’s why that’s a problem.  Again, when calculating net debt, you subtract financial assets because you assume those assets could be used to offset debt. The glaring problem here is that Canada’s financial assets include the assets of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP)... the assets of the CPP and the QPP are used for payments to existing and future retirees and can’t be used to offset government debt without compromising the ability of the CPP and the QPP to provide benefits to retirees. So, Canada having the lowest net debt-to-GDP in the G7 doesn’t mean much when the CPP and the QPP assets are incorrectly used to make us look less indebted than we actually are.  Thankfully, there’s a much more accurate way to measure of Canada’s indebtedness—gross debt to GDP. Gross debt, according to the IMF, includes all “liabilities that require future payment of interest and/or principal by the debtor to the creditor.” And extending the analysis to include a broader group of advanced countries provides a more accurate assessment of Canada’s comparative indebtedness.  According to a new study, among 32 industrialized countries, Canada slides from the fifth-lowest debt ranking when net debt is measured to 26th when gross debt is used. Further, Canada’s gross debt exceeds the total size of the national economy by nearly 5 percentage points. In other words, Canada falls 21 positions in international rankings after switching from net debt to gross debt, the largest change by far of any country.  The consequences of fiscal imprudence are clear. Just like households, governments must pay interest on debt. In 2024, Canada’s federal debt interest costs are expected to eclipse $54.0 billion—equal to the entire amount of revenue the government collects from the Goods and Services Tax (GST).  And debt must be repaid by future generations of Canadians through tax increases or reduction in services.   When the Trudeau government claims that Canada is in an enviable position relative to our peers on government indebtedness, it is misleading Canadians. The data clearly show that Canada is among the most indebted advanced economies in the world. That’s not something to boast about."

For Trudeau, redistribution politics means something different now than it did nine years ago - "The younger Trudeau’s election victory in 2015 can in part be attributed to an agenda built around narrowing the income divide and redistributing resources from the wealthiest to the middle class. As a result of that election, Canada’s top earners pay a marginal income tax rate of as high as 55 per cent, among the highest in the world.  In their budget earlier this year, the Liberals sought to bolster their waning political fortunes by going back to their 2015 political playbook with new capital gains taxes they framed as taking from the wealthy to finance social programs for everyone else. The move fell flat.  Polls are mixed on the popularity of the specific measure, but the tax increase hasn’t captured the electorate’s imagination and certainty hasn’t changed the political trajectory for the Liberals.  In a poll by Abacus Data for the Toronto Star released this week, the government’s budget management was cited as the second highest reason for negative impressions of Trudeau.  The failure of the capital gains tax to resonate positively reflects how redistribution politics means something different today than it did nine years ago.  In a world of inflation and high interest rates and high unemployment, getting the macroeconomic policy right means more to the “have-nots” than how much taxes are being paid by the rich... The deterioration of the macroeconomic environment over the past three years has been a major burden on low-income households and young families. Rising unemployment will add to those woes. Taxing the rich won’t change that."