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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • What part of my comments were deceptive? I didn’t comment on the law, or the scientific “conjecture” on both sides. I encouraged a user to be upset that someone told them an obvious lie; I even pointed out that they don’t have to be pro-trans to be angered by that. I’m not a mob, I’m not outraged, I’m irked on principle that obvious claptrap is being used as a tool to bamboozle those with less time to think about things. If the strength of scientific conjecture was so strong surely the debate could rest on actual science, not proposing disingenuous sub-ethical studies. I didn’t comment on any of what you’ve accused me of…until now.

    The reason it can’t is stand on its own scientific merits is because, though it would be great for anti-trans campaigners if it did, the science doesn’t really back their view-point of “gender realism”. It’s not a scientific debate, it’s one of social and emotive balance. I think that trans-men are men, and trans-women are women; both as it costs me nothing to recognise this, and because the science of “gendered brains” doesn’t slightly support the notion that gonad sex, and gender, are 1:1 aligned.

    Frankly the irony of you coming in and accusing me of being an outraged mob is ridiculous. The only mob antics on display are yours, strawmanning and accusing me of things simply not present in my post.


  • You should do though. Not necessarily on the topic, but a group who definitely know what you were just told when they spouted off about the lack of evidence, effectively tried to gaslight you with “scientific process”.

    I think we need to normalise being pissed off at being lied to like this. You don’t need to become a pro-trans advocate but you can still say “fuck’em” to the people demonstrably deceiving you.


  • is this common

    Yes, it’s actually really common due to takings being relatively small in cash these days.

    Even when cash was much more prevalent, stores (even really big ones) would deposit in person. In 2005 my friend was required to walk to the bank at 8am the morning after the Xbox360 came out to deposit the entire takings of the midnight sale, in person. He worked for one of the biggest retailers in the UK at the time. IIRC he had over £35k in his backpack (even then many big purchases were being made using Chip and Pin).



  • This is the simple reality of capital city focus. People want to be where the other people are, therefore they move there, and the cycle continues. Whether is proximity of existing industry (i.e. Finance, Film), statutory bodies (i.e. Parliament, Regulators), or just the higher density of people making a de facto larger scene (i.e. Arts), there’s nothing evil about this per say. However, there is a huge rotation of exterior talent through these areas as a result; meaning that the education system of Nottingham (as an example) contributes a great deal to the continued growth and stability of these sectors in London. It’s only right therefore that London somewhat repays that pattern.

    It’s not just an ancient cities thing. You can look at funding in Scotland and see that Glasgow though relatively young in its current wave of economic prosperity (due reasons that aren’t worth going into) is already having it’s own version of this effect on the rest of the nation. Glasgow is slurping up a huge quantity of talent from the rest of Scotland.

    As a Glaswegian in London it’s clear to me to see how the economics and impacts of these comparatively large cities are so similar (though surely at different scales).










  • I think that’s likely the route that Tesla would take, sue that the rules as stated aren’t capable of accommodating Force Majeure or other similar disruptions. But it will take time; and I don’t imagine that they’ll need to, eventually there will be some change to allow other delivery routes. I don’t think this was done on purpose; rather that the restrictions were placed reasonably and this hadn’t come up as no other automaker in the country had deliberately antagonised its workers to this extent.

    This is the problem with Tesla wanting to operate the same way in every country, if you don’t cede that countries are unique bodies of law, regulations, and social practices, you can’t then complain when you fall afoul of that combination.


  • They can try suing but the postal service hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s not their fault that the government department in charge of issuing plates has made it a requirement for their outsourcing partners to use the national postal service to deliver plates.

    To be clear, this isn’t an action, this is by default an inaction of a group in solidarity that’s having an unintended (and subjectively a somewhat funny side effect); but it’s the registry’s rules that are causing the impasse.


  • Well I think the problem is the car isn’t registered until a plate is affixed and it’s likely, from the impact this is having, that consumer law prevents the delivery of an unregistered vehicle.

    To my knowledge, there is a similar requirement in the UK for Auto sales, the registration isn’t complete until a plate is affixed. (There was a blip in this process circa early-2018 IIRC, and it led to Fiat having issues fulfilling car sales to their retail partners, don’t recall the specifics but I bought a new Fiat then, and there was some chatter from the forecourt that it was good it was cleared up).


  • Well I don’t speak for everyone in the UK but we are Europeans, just not in the European Union. Nobody would say that the Swiss aren’t European just for not having EU citizenship.

    That said the headline is itself lazy and hubristic; to call ALL Europeans these things is simply wrong, the breadth of economic and societal difference between the East and West, the North and South, make such generalisations completely pointless.



  • My point I suppose is that traditional advertising hasn’t operated with out a context on which to show ads. There has always been some context, some manner to target an advert at consumers to whom it might be most relevant. The idea that advertisers should see value in an untargetted ad because that’s historically what they bought is wrong, because that’s not something they ever historically bought. So my point boils down to the idea that some sort of targeting has to occur for there to be value in the advertising; and given these are adrev funded platforms, they’ll need that value to exist - however that the scope and scale of data collection is wildly disproportionate to the needs of creating audiences.

    The processes by which a user can guard themselves is simply too opaque; the average user can control what they show a platform intentionally (through likes, interactions etc.) but has no concept of how to protect themselves against some cookie farm bullshit selling Facebook the contents of their last three trips to Asda.com. We have three viable options;

    • Leave Facebook et al unchecked.
    • Ban the concept of targeting advertisements entirely, thus shutting down Facebook, Google, and most free services that the world depends on (because people are very unlikely to pay for these services in enough quantity to keep them running).
    • Regulate the concept of targeting advertisements to be fair and equitable for both parties.

  • It’s worth noting that the advertising industry never has had a concept of an untargetted advert. They have always had some marker to target their distribution; be that geographical placement of a billboard, the typical social status of a newspaper’s readership, or the target audience for a tv programme they run ads in. Truly untargetted ads would be effectively useless to an advertiser; nobody in Kolkatta is buying the new American Swiss Cheese from Danone; and nobody in Middle England is buying Japanese tentacle sex toys.

    Distribution channel (i.e. a site’s core purpose) is the last untargetted target option; sell sex stuff on porn sites, games stuff on games sites etc. However, when your platform is for everyone, does everything, hosts any kind of content, you have nothing to use.

    It is my opinion that the best solution for the average user is to ban cross-site tracking and scraping, but allow content and interaction based advertising within the site. If someone posts on a bunch of maternity groups, advertise them pumps etc. but someone searching that on Google should have the reasonable expectation that clicking on maternitytips.co.nz won’t mean their Facebook feed is full of pumps. I think for most people, that level of profiling is acceptable and, crucially, understandable. They can understand how the data footprint they create impacts what they see. Which is far less intrusive.

    That said, Facebook can burn, I left it nearly ten years ago and wouldn’t dream of returning.


  • It isn’t legal for a start, it’s technically still highly illegal, but there are loopholes and defenses created in a variety of acts, which can defend from prosecution for the vast vast majority of doctor-led abortions. It can still be found illegal in a hospital setting if the patient lies about certain factors.

    Street/Backroom Abortions are not covered by these legislative defenses and so remain prosecutable and illegal.