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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 41m

If I was doing it outside Dan Brown's house I think that might cross a line tbh

Reposted by Owen Michael

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 14h

You know how there’s been this big push towards encouraging older people to do puzzles, cognitive games, and to learn new things to keep them from succumbing to dementia?

Wonder where that’s gonna go with the rise of “outsource your cognitive functions to AI, it’ll be convenient” culture

SteveIsDamaged @steveisdamages.bsky.social · 14h

Cognition is like strength. Use is required to not just gain, but maintain. The more thinking and cognitive work we offload, the duller we become as a result.

It's like deciding you'll use a mobility scooter without need and then figuring out a year later that you can no longer walk.

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 16h

Less checks and balances than Richard the Lionheart....

Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 16h

Though annoyingly Franklin accidentally came surprisingly close to a more modern system in the debates

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 16h

I think it's at least an understandable first adopter mistake in 1789

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 16h

I think quite a few are sold on the idea she /is/ a liberal

Reposted by Owen Michael

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 20h

“Asshole with a thin leftist veneer” is what a substantial number of people want, because they don’t actually want to make the world better, they want to feel they’re part of a club and that their resentment of life and desire for someone to tell them how to think is justified.

fleurdor.bsky.social @fleurdor.bsky.social · 20h

I have never understood this guy's appeal. He's just an asshole with a thin leftist veneer. Like Vaush with even less substance.

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 18h

I for one wasn't aware they'd even started.

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 2d

Or the maid, with the employer with grabby hands and nothing to eat but bread and noodles, no bedroom, and no way to leave.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘Every day I cry’: 50 women talk about life as a domestic worker under the Gulf’s kafala system

Denounced as giving a ‘veneer of legality to slaveholding’, the kafala labour code persists, allowing employers to abuse women, who vanish from society. This is the testimony of some of those workers,...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 2d

God bless The Church Times for their ongoing insistence on responding moderately but forcefully to the Reverend Canon Nigel Biggar’s nonsense. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Even given all that Biggar writes about the universality of slavery and the complicity of Africans, three things might be said. First, Britain played a key part and, however others may want to respond to their own history, it is morally responsible to face up to our own heritage. Second, as a Tory, he might have made more of Burke’s view that society is a partnership not just between the living, but between the living, the dead, and those still to be born. Third, guilt is not the only spur to action. There are the obligations that we owe one another irrespective of any personal responsibility for atrocities in the past.

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 1d

The only area Labour has reputation with more than a fringe sliver of Reform is "protecting minorities" (which is neutral or negative for many of these voters). It can try to win bsck Labour to Reform wavers, who will be a bit more balanced,but can't chase Reform 2024 voters or Tory/Reform switchers

YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 1d

Reform UK voters trust the party significantly more than they trust the other main parties in every area polled

yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

Are Welsh tourists specifically identifiable with the Welsh Tract ones?

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

It's that it has more in common with Latin American politics than Western European

Reposted by Owen Michael

K. Chen @tznkai.bsky.social · 1d

I don't know who I saw this insight from first but it's a big one and it's genuinely mindblowing despite (because) of how obvious it is

Strategic Butter Reserve @euphoria5l.bsky.social · 1d

America's self image is very western European but we really do have more in common with other American states than anyone in Europe tbh

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

Is David Cameron's campaign pledge to crack down on chocolate oranges so quickly forgotten?

Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

I'm trying to think of any that /don't/ and drawing a blank (though ours have more public rally aspects than a lot of European ones I think?)

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

Did you miss how Liz Truss's premiership went?

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 1d

So did the Extinction Rebellion Landlords Caucus, IIRC

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Reposted by Owen Michael

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 1d

When you could code silly quizzes on Facebook, it was FULL of "what would you be in medieval times?!" etc.

I made one that nearly always answered "died as a child", "died in childbirth", "lived and died as a servant"

People got SUPER mad with it.

Everyone assumes they'll be at the top of the tree

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

The subtext of ‘we should be more like Dubai’, beyond the obvious racism, is ‘I should have a servant’.

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Drow Paweł Włodkowic 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dov.bsky.social · 2d

It's not really crazy (and very much the norm in Tolkienology) to ask "did Gondor perhaps, you know, cause its own problems by refusing to treat Haradrim like human beings with a right to self-determination"

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Euan Healey @euanhealey.bsky.social · 2d

I can't stop thinking about the VJ day memorial, when 104-year old Yavar Abbas, a veteran of the 14th Army's Burma Campaign interrupted proceedings, visibly emotional, to salute "his brave King".

And men like Jenrick believe his face tells you everything you need to know about his "integration".

Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 2d

One more concession to Englishness was giving up his youngest son to serve and die fighting for this country. But that's another story.

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Chris Wills (he/him) 🏳️‍🌈 @crispeater.bsky.social · 2d

Badenoch is nasty, bigoted and desperate, same as Jenrick, same as their party. Every time either one opens their mouth, they take the Tories a step closer to extinction.

Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 2d

Badenoch: "While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China built five nuclear reactors."

A perfect summary of conservative idiocy. Glorifying authoritarian post-communism for its efficiency while vilifying democracy for seeking nuance and respect.

It is the Right who hate their own countries.

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 2d

I think at least a part genuinely may be "people assuming she's Labour because she's black (understandably) rubbed her up the wrong way"

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Reposted by Owen Michael

Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 2d

It's a mark of how profoundly silly Stephen Daisley is that, in writing about the Manchester attack, he targets people like my great-grandfather, a Jew who lived in Ancoats, Cheetham Hill and Crumpsall for fifty years and never learned English.

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 2d

No, it's not. It's all a lie. The blunt truth is across the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them.

Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 2d

Outstanding piece by Stephen Daisley.

Ethnicity is no barrier to Britishness - it's culture and integration.

That means 'smaller cohorts and aggressive integration policies' - and tackling the institutions that 'have amplified grievance narratives and radical anti-Western ideologies'.

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Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 2d

Isn't that exactly what the French policy is that has failed so spectacularly?

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