[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 0 points 4 days ago

It was literally just because they didn't want their MPs to get involved in a situation that might've turned violent. Can you imagine if any organisation had said, 'Yes, we want to oblige our staff to go and maybe get their heads kicked in by Nazis'?

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 days ago

That may explain why they didn't abolish slavery, but does not justify the fact that they themselves owned slaves.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago

True, but one that conveniently allowed them to do what they were already doing anyway. As I say: not titans of moral probity.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 73 points 1 month ago

FIFA. Every man and boy in England loves FIFA, except me. I find it totally boring and pointless.

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31

TL;DR: arguably.

14

Starmer responds to questions from the Big Issue journalists and from vendors. Nothing particularly groundbreaking here but it all sounds good.

7

A slightly too wordy and too long article that I nonetheless basically agree with. Key paragraphs:

Starmer’s strategic sense has been impressive, from opening his leadership consensually with qualified support for, and constructive criticism of, lockdown, to encouraging Boris Johnson to get his denials of Partygate on the record and leaving them there, to, most of all, his relentless focus on the voters he actually needs to win, rather than the ones who make the most noise.

This, of course, is the source of the biggest criticisms of Starmer from the left: that he won the leadership by relentlessly focusing on the voters he needed to win within the Labour Party, and then pivoted towards the national electorate rather than sticking with a prospectus whose chief appeal was to people who had already been shown to be a minority of a minority. I am not wholly unsympathetic to this view: his ten pledges were mostly bad, and he shouldn’t have made them; but dropping bad policies is better than sticking to them, and winning is better than losing.

After all, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t keep any of his promises, which may be why a recent election leaflet endorsing his bid to be the independent MP for Islington North gives so much prominence to his role in saving the Number 4 bus route.

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Refreshing sanity from Conservative Home, of all places!

There's no equivalence between what Kevin Craig did (placed a bet on himself to lose) and what Craig Williams is accused of (using inside information to place a bet), and no need for a new law, given that what Williams is accused of is already illegal.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 200 points 1 month ago

No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone's historical existence.

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[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 130 points 1 month ago

You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.

People are so convinced that if we're more cruel to criminals, they'll stop committing crimes, or if we're harsher to workers, we'll work harder, or if you're tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.

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This is according to research by Get Voting. Seems worth sharing just to potentially have Liz Truss lose her seat!

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This is what's keeping me up at night, and also exactly why I think all the predictions of four or five hundred seats for Labour are overblown.

10

The left is only able to demand that an apparently imminent Labour government be bolder in office because Starmer has got the party to the brink of victory – and has done it by doing the very things they opposed.

Never have I 'this'ed so hard.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by frankPodmore@slrpnk.net to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

The 2024 Labour Manifesto is now online!

I am genuinely excited by loads of it, especially the green policies and the expansion of workers' rights, but probably the most important part of it is the stuff aimed at economic growth.

What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Inspired to volunteer? Some more sensible, moderate emotion?

17

I've read a fair bit of philosophy and Hegel is the first time I've felt like the stereotype of philosophers, where they're being deliberately obscure to hide the fact that their arguments don't actually follow, might actually apply.

Now, most likely, I'm just being stupid, so I was wondering if anyone here actually got anything much out of Hegel and, if so, what?

I'm most of the way through the Phenomenology of Spirit, if that's any help.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 77 points 2 months ago

The whole internet loves Milkshake Lady, a lovely lady that throws milkshakes at Nazis! 5 seconds later We're delighted to inform you she also publishes raunchy pictures on adult sites

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 69 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I kinda think that if you can imagine a one-line fix to a plot hole, it isn't really a plot hole.

I remember someone insisting to me that there was this huge plot hole in the film of the Fellowship of the Ring, because Merry and Pippin don't get told about what Frodo and Sam are actually doing until the Council of Elrond, but still willingly run around risking life and limb to help them. Now, not only is this not a plot hole in itself (I'm pretty sure I'd help anyone fleeing a demonic horseman, just on principle, never mind if that person was my lifelong friend/cousin), it's also quite obvious that they could have been told everything offscreen. The audience didn't need to hear all that explanation again, five minutes after we first heard it.

A lot of plot holes people like to complain about are basically of this nature. 'Can you imagine a fix?' Yep, easily. 'Did the audience need to hear it?' Nope, because I could easily imagine it. 'Well, there you go, then.'

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 73 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This isn't a strict proof, but Occam's razor applies here.

If we claim the Universe is a simulation, we're supposing, on no evidence whatsoever, that there's a whole other unknown universe running our Universe. That certainly makes us guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity!

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 90 points 9 months ago

Not a line, but in Ratatouille there's a point where Linguini is trying to explain to his love interest that he's being guided by a rat in his hat and he's saying, 'I've got a tiny... little...' We see the reaction shot of her looking confused/disgusted and very quickly glancing down at his crotch.

It's just a fraction of a second, but a great gag for the grownups anyway!

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 119 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So, fun fact, St Augustine, who is considered one of the Church Fathers, explicitly argued that if the 'Antipodes' (i.e., southern continents not connected to Europe, Asia or Africa) actually existed and had humans living there, that would prove the Gospel was untrue.

The reason for this is as follows: Christians of his era believed that the reason God had allowed the Romans to destroy the Second Temple and push the Jews into exile was to prepare the men of all nations (as understood at the time) for the coming of the Gospel. The idea was that the Jews had taken the Old Testament, and the prophecies of the Messiah therein, across the whole world. Augustine argues that if the Antipodes contained human beings who had never had any kind of contact with Jews, and therefore no contact with the OT, and no contact with Christians, and therefore no contact with the New Testament, either, that must mean the Gospels are false. Why? Because there's no conceivable reason that a just God would have deprived entire civilisations of the chance of redemption.

Of course, we now know that at the time Augustine was writing (4th-5th century AD), there were literally millions of people who had never had the slightest contact with the Jews or Christians and, furthermore, wouldn't do so for another millennium. So, per Augustine's argument, all those millions were condemned to Hell (the concept of Purgatory didn't exist at this point, but condemning them all to no chance of Heaven, just because they were unfortunate to be born a long way away from Jersualem, is clearly also unjust). Either God is incredibly unjust and unmerciful, which means the Gospels are untrue, OR the Good News wasn't actually spread to all men, which must also mean that they're not true.

The upshot of this is that one of the Church Fathers has, in retrospect, irrefutably argued that the Gospels are untrue. The amount of special pleading required to make out that, actually, the Maori or the Easter Islanders or [insert any other uncontacted peoples here] had an opportunity to accept Christ and somehow missed it entirely is far beyond any sane interpretation of the evidence.

Now, as you might have noticed, this hasn't stopped people from believing in the Gospels. I don't see why the discovery of life on another world would dislodge people from a belief that is transparently false when nothing else has.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 76 points 1 year ago

Capital 'N' is written differently; 'U' and 'u' are unambiguous.

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frankPodmore

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