As I have been recently reminded, ancient TV and film had a giant horse wheeled into a city with people undetected inside. Maybe real military tactics are overall not great for storytelling.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 2d ago

Modern TV and film are full of these sorts of over-complicated nonsense tactics you could never use in real life, because writers seem to imagine that good military tactics have to be terribly clever, when in fact they generally have to be terribly *reliable* so you can pull them off.

DSA-aligned Democrats are now the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States, in an incredible turn of events www.theargumentmag.com/p/who-suppor...

TIL about Microsoft Office auto saves. I knew something was being saved for document recovery but didn't know it was reliable enough to replace good old ctrl+s after every sentence.

Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · yesterday

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

Everyone blames Badenoch for this, and it's not wrong, but also, where is the rest of the party? They're keeping her on. Seemingly no big disputes. Do any of them do anything? The official opposition party. Where are they? What do they want?

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · yesterday

Kemi Badenoch certainly seems to be advancing with her agenda to turn the Conservatives into Reform.

I was struck by a piece on Radio 4 the other day, asking whether Burnham would be more "pragmatic" - meaning "positive" - about drilling in the North Sea. It was simply taken for granted that drilling was the "pragmatic" option, while opposing it was dogmatic or ideological.

James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · 2d ago

Wrote about the deafening silence on our summer of climate impacts from Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, business leaders, and even some campaign groups. The dominant climate discourse from the past week has been from those who want to ditch net zero targets and trash decarbonisation policies.

Count Binface electoral history. Best % for Westminster contest is 0.6% though got 1% for London Mayor. Clacton is an esp crowded field of minor candidates - but the Farage factor will probably get him his first saved deposit. Good chance of second place.

Flashbacks to when the sandstorm chip damages my Pokémon.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 2d ago

Gaming thought of the day: a lot of games, because they're unwilling to impose much friction, miss out on the dramatic possibilities of weather. I was playing AC: Black Flag Resync'd and the new dynamic weather feels a bit wasted because storms don't really matter very much.

Feels like how Brexshit apparently became a thing in UK schools as a generic term for bad things.

Sky Marchini@sky.skymarchini.net · 3d ago

sister tells me that the kids these days don't say "low key" they say "lowkirk" or "lowkirkuinely" and I don’t know how to handle this information

Information asymmetry ‘lemon problem’ - unable to tell at a glance *which* goods are high quality, consumers assume they are all relatively low quality and thus only pay for cheap ones

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d ago

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

Get their asses. The EU has to be more than a bandwagon of petty right wingers competing to be the most easily manipulated by our enemies.

Sánchez slams reaction to Ceuta crisis in letter to Von der Leyen

In a letter Saturday, Sánchez laments what he describes as a lack of EU solidarity driven by "prejudice, misinformation and attacks" for political gain. #EuropeNews

euronews.com

Pretty sure the blasphemy line was crossed years ago, just gets blasted on government accounts now.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 3d ago

Also I realize that these guys just mine 'cool' sounding passages for content, but I can't help but notice that in their zeal to claim the mantle of divine ordination, they stray pretty close to blasphemy - equating the sending of soldiers by the SecDef to a man sent by God directly.

Brutal.

If there was a codified constitution he wouldn't be able to do the devolution he wants!

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4d ago

Devolution plans strengthen case for written UK constitution, says Burnham

Looked up cinema times for Spiderman and got spoiled by the cast list. 😞

It's pretty infuriating that Trump is denying disaster aid to Oregon for political reasons and I have barely heard anything about it, while Biden was falsely accused of doing the exact same thing to North Carolina and millions of people believed that

Ben Houchen introducing UBI using devolution powers would be quite the political development.

Ben Zaranko@benzaranko.bsky.social · 4d ago

Yes I assumed the database/practical aspect could be a major stumbling block. But some sort of universal cash rebate, one per household, might be simpler to administer?

Spent the afternoon and evening with an elderly relative and I think their Facebook feed was actually 100% ai slop. Lots of mindless scrolling to pass the time and I literally didn't see one real video.

Fox News being a completely dishonest propaganda outlet in every single way except for running a totally straight-arrow unbiased polling operation is one of American media's longest running and most hilarious bits. bsky.app/profile/mari...

Mari Murphy@marimurphy.bsky.social · 5d ago

WITH A FOX NEWS LINK????????? 👀

Trump 9 points underwater *IN TEXAS.* It's literally impossible to tell how the media would cover a Dem President with equivalently low approval ratings (because there's never been one before) but you'd be hearing LAME DUCK every 15 seconds

Hyde T. Voltyge@hydevoltyge.bsky.social · 6d ago

Folks... this is a reputable pollster.. And the gov race!?! With "extremely interested" voters it's 53 Talarico - 47 Paxton. GOV: Abbott 50 - Hinajosa 49 !!!! Article claims "extremely motivated" there... 53 Hinajosa - 47 Abbott. Yeah uh what??? www.foxnews.com/politics/fox...

saw an article today about an az politician saying how great it was that we're now in emergency drought conditions because the farmers get automatic bailouts and I feel like way more Professional Rural Understanders just breeze by sentences like that. www.paysonroundup.com/news/arizona...

Arizona a drought disaster

It’s official.

paysonroundup.com

ok, you can generate 9/11 all you want but it will not allow you to create a 100 ft tall nude man

Hard to control my eye rolls.

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 5d ago

Due to the migrant crisis in Africa with Morocco: Italy has ordered the closure of its air and sea borders with Spain, ending normal Schengen free movement between the two countries. Travelers are now subject to border controls and restrictions.

it's an interesting contradiction of devolving power to local people when it's a pretty consistent finding that they don't really care about exercising that power

Wild

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

so Susan Collins (one of her flying monkey SuperPACs any ways) unloaded its first anti-Troy Jackson ad....

This is even worse than Badenoch’s letter yesterday, as she has space to explain what she would do instead of net zero targets to tackle the climate change she accepts is real but then doesn’t. She accuses Labour of not having a plan, then insists we should trust her unannounced plan will be better.

Newly described Australian fossils tell a wild story: an ichthyosaur ate a pterosaur, then was itself torn to pieces by a pliosaur. This is the first evidence of these three animals interacting within the same food web! 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

She lost to a guy AIPAC spent seven figures attacking and he proudly reveled in it. The one they backed came third. To call a Biss win "AIPAC bought" is grossly dishonest, and embracing it amounts to El-Sayed attacking an incoming Dem congressman who *agrees* with both of them about Israel & AIPAC.

Kat Abughazaleh@katmabu.bsky.social · 6d ago

AIPAC may have bought our election in Illinois, but we're not going to let that happen in Michigan. 5 days left to make them panic. Vote for Abdul on or before August 4th.

Bigger Nigeria is coming for you. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference

A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at ‌a global conference taking place in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screen...

reuters.com