@jsl @trademark Labour has drifted sharply to the right ever since John Smith (leader before Blair) died suddenly in 1994. The last even remotely non-right-wing leader was Jeremy Corbyn, who was hounded out of the party in 2019 by the ratfuckers who backed Starmer.

@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?

@cstross I was just thinking the other day that efficiency *is* fragility and, conversely, that redundancy is an aspect of resilience.

@jef

@parkrosepermaculture often wears guillotine earrings...

@feorag @cstross

@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.

It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.

@MedeaVanamonde @cstross @HighlandLawyer too many toxins getting into the food supply.
Dissolve them in piranha solution, and use the liquor as chemical feedstock.

@cstross @trademark The media's bias is indeed something I had to learn is true

@cstross Wow what?! This is the first time I've seen that quote.

I mean the charitable read is "how do we end poverty" but even then that is a HELL of a way to phrase that if so?! And it's hard to give these people the benefit of the doubt rn

@cstross I mean the entire thing of the Epstein files is wanting to think "it can't actually be that, this must be a misrepresentation" and then it's ACTUALLY that and WORSE than what you'd first think so I mean, I guess we should read it in the worst face value way

@cstross

It's the entire attitude of the ultra rich class that they did this all by themselves with so little effort and obviously nobody else is worth a damn and why can't they be smart and rich like us?

They don't even realize they're simply grifting off the rest of us.

@cstross

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

@Colman @cstross @SoftwareTheron

per Ministry for the Future that problem self corrects when the small planes start falling out of the sky

@cstross I@jsl@hachyderm.io Leftist policies in general are very popular, if the left would just stop the self-harm, they would win easily. Media bias can only do so much, it is not all powerful. Jeremy Corbyn in particular was a much too easy target, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine

@HighlandLawyer @cstross

and treating people as objects is sin per Pratchett

@MedeaVanamonde @HighlandLawyer @cstross

But if we ate one a week I think it would start deterring them

@darwinwoodka @MedeaVanamonde @cstross
Well let's be fair about this: a national lottery. One person a week is to be sacrificed, drawn by lot; but the number of entries in the lottery is the number of <£$¥€> one has, & that wealth will be returned to the national pot. It could be you, but statistically it's much more likely to be a billionaire.

@HighlandLawyer @MedeaVanamonde @cstross

I think it might go faster if we just ate the richest one every week though

@jef @feorag @cstross the guillotine maybe the only technology that can save this century.

@gjm @javierg @cstross iirc he lobbied for more money to the vaccine makers, and specifically not for more vaccines

@atax1a @javierg @cstross Noted. Is there some analysis somewhere of how that allegedly makes him responsible for millions of deaths?

(I can imagine how it might. I can also imagine how it might have been the actually-most-effective course of action but spinnable as responsible for millions of deaths by people who want to make him look bad. I can also imagine how it might be very impossible to determine whether what he did was actually good or bad either in expectation or in actual effects, which seems to me the most likely situation.)

[EDITED to add:] A bit of casual web-searching didn't turn up anything super-obvious but did produce e.g. this https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/gates-foundation-donates-70-million-to-covid/ which for all I know may have been a poorly-directed donation or one where donating more would have done a lot of good but, well, I know _I_ didn't donate any number of millions to anything related to COVID vaccines and it seems like if Gates wanted everyone to die he could just have, like, not done that.