@feorag @cstross France absolutely should lean in on making guillotines a world-recognized brand. Every teen should have a Monsieur Choppy labubu hanging off their backpack.

@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?

@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I'd prefer to compost them, better for the environment.

@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.

New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html

@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

New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html

New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html

@cstross @SoftwareTheron we could also do a lot of things a lot cheaper if we actually assigned the costs properly. Excess air travel would be self correcting if it had to cover the full costs for example.

@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.

@cstross
It is the intersection of the degrees of selfishness & foresightedness. If your level of selfishness is "the good of all mankind" you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accomodation, etc; if "me and my family" you get traditional aristocratic behaviour; if "me & nobody else" you treat everyone else as objects, which can be disposed of at your whim- mass disposal of the poor on a par with a neat close-cropped lawn.

@HighlandLawyer @cstross

Nuke the Rich.
Eating them is bad for the collective colon

@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.

@feorag @cstross France absolutely should lean in on making guillotines a world-recognized brand. Every teen should have a Monsieur Choppy labubu hanging off their backpack.

@javierg @cstross How is Gates responsible for millions of deaths during the pandemic?

@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.

@gjm this does not appear to be a question in good faith so we're outta here

@atax1a Obviously you're under no obligation to answer any questions, nor to believe anything I say, but for what it's worth it was absolutely a question in good faith. I don't know exactly what Gates did and didn't do, it sounds like you know more than me, I had a bit of a look and didn't find anything definitive, and I'd like to know more.