What was that album title? 'If you accept this,your kids are next., ’

“If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next.” By the Manic Street Preachers.

Equally Cursed and Blessed by Catatonia.

Any animal that could eventually kill a human is allowed. (You can’t say something like a fruit fly, for instance.)

I pick the Poison Dart Frog, famous for their bright colours and tendency to secrete a potent toxin out of their skin when threatened by predators.

Then I will simply choose not to touch the frog. What’re you gonna do? Come down here and make me. We shall see then who gets to lick the road.

Everything being made in China is a bit of a hyperbole but…

stream of consciousness rant ahead

The rise of neoliberalism involved the deindustrialisation of the imperial core, partly as a way to cheapen costs by relying on a pool of labour with lower minimum wages and worse safety regulations, partly to kneecap labour unions that were forming an effective political bloc against neoliberal social policies, partly to obfuscate the environmental impact of consumerism by shunting all the environmentally hazardous part of the process of producing consumer goods abroad, and partly to complete the transition of imperial core economies entirely into extraction and finance.

At the time China which was liberalising under Dengist reforms and also cosying up to the west, was a perfect target as one of the places to offload industry.

As for why none of this industrial capacity is being moved out of China despite deteriorating relations between them a the imperial core…

Industrialising a country takes a lot of planning and is expensive, (especially in countries like the UK where most of the factories and former supply line infrastructure has been torn up and the land sold off, and what remains is too dilapidated to support a renewed heavy industry), so it’s unappealing to a capitalist hegemon that’s in favour of austerity and low government spending.

What’s the source of that last image? I’m really hoping that’s one of the examples from the 80s and not a recent one…

Yeah, that’s an 80’s one. Here it is in the Tory Party’s online archive.

I’m hoping this is just me dooming but having grown up in the dying days of section 28, I’m genuinely scared for this next generation of queer people.

Section 28 of the 1988 local government act (often just referred to colloquially as section 28), was a law that made it illegal to discuss queer identities in schools.

It was repealed in 2003, but the recent resurgence of homophobia in parliament is using a similar language around “protecting children” is identical to the shit Thatcher and her cronies were throwing around in the 80’s.

Yeah, and they’ve jumped the “protect our kids” wankery into overdrive as well.

Complete doomer mode: I think they’re also gonna re-establish section 28 soon.

It’s been this kind of shit hole surveillance state for a long time. Look at the snooper’s charter/investigatory powers act, for example.

Fuck yeah! My “Bigfoot is actually a big cellar spider and that’s why it’s always blurry in pictures” theory is gonna be broadcast to everyone’s grandmother!

During the state mandated mourning, a man was arrested for carrying a piece of blank paper because the police thought he might write a protest slogan on it later.

Manpril sounds like an over-the-counter erectile dysfunction medicine that’s got a list of side effects taller than the bottle it comes in.

Caws.

There’s a lot of horror franchises that shouldn’t’ve been more than a single film. Off the top of my head: Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Blair Witch, and Black Christmas.

Only Fools and Horses shoulda ended on the episode where they finally strike it rich. None of the episodes after that justify bringing it back.

Anyone else remember the short-lived Matt Hancock app? What is it with Tories and shitty vanity projects?

I enjoyed it, it’s not exactly a light read considering the subject but it’s well paced and tightly written. Its depiction of war and trauma may be triggering for some people.

Your experience may vary depending on the translation. Most English translations are based on the 1929 translation that made the odd choice of switching German slang and cultural references with rough English equivalents as well as trying to tone down some of the darker parts.

I read the 1993 translation which tries to be a bit more accurate to the original book, but does do the thing with swapping the slang around which comes across a bit odd especially earlier on where it’s layed on a bit thick imho.

I’m currently working through my book backlog.

Last book I read was All Quiet on The Western Front, right now I’m partway through House of Leaves.

I’m really good at palming coins and doing variations of disappearing coin tricks. Suck at any other form of slight-of-hand but I can make a coin-sized object look like it vanished with remarkable ease and smoothness.

BTW I went and read through the studies someone sent me in that thread and turns out the graphs from those studies show that trans women are more similar to cis men than to cis women in all metrics.

Which of the studies said that?

Because I’ve been reading through them myself and all I’m getting is stuff like:

This which says:

Results In this cohort of athletes, TW had similar testosterone concentration (TW 0.7±0.5 nmol/L, CW 0.9±0.4 nmol/), higher oestrogen (TW 742.4±801.9 pmol/L, CW 336.0±266.3 pmol/L, p=0.045), higher absolute handgrip strength (TW 40.7±6.8 kg, CW 34.2±3.7 kg, p=0.01), lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s:forced vital capacity ratio (TW 0.83±0.07, CW 0.88±0.04, p=0.04), lower relative jump height (TW 0.7±0.2 cm/kg; CW 1.0±0.2 cm/kg, p<0.001) and lower relative V̇O2max (TW 45.1±13.3 mL/kg/min/, CW 54.1±6.0 mL/kg/min, p<0.001) compared with CW athletes. TM had similar testosterone concentration (TM 20.5±5.8 nmol/L, CM 24.8±12.3 nmol/L), lower absolute hand grip strength (TM 38.8±7.5 kg, CM 45.7±6.9 kg, p=0.03) and lower absolute V̇O2max (TM 3635±644 mL/min, CM 4467±641 mL/min p=0.002) than CM.

And this Which says:

Key Findings Key Biomedical Findings Biological data are severely limited, and often methodologically flawed. There is limited evidence regarding the impact of testosterone suppression (through, for example, gender-affirming hormone therapy or surgical gonad removal) on transgender women athletes’ performance. Available evidence indicates trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.

Both of which were cited in the articles OP linked.

This is the exact opposite of your claim.

The bluestones in Stonehenge come from West Wales. Instead of quarrying stone from near the monument, they dragged these huge blocks from ~278km away. Likewise, the altar stone comes from ~700km away in North-East Scotland. It must’ve been very important for the ancient Britons to’ve used these specific rocks for some reason, but their religious practices were conveyed via a now extinct oral tradition so no-one knows exactly why they did it.

I don’t know what that means.

What I’m saying is that there’s insufficient force and direction for a shampoo bottle to penetrate just from falling onto it.