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Tom King

@tallgeekychap.bsky.social

440 followers 470 following 1.9K posts

Seeking a future that isn't the end-point of where we are. I believe in a more generous society: generoussociety.com Political consultant running a small firm after many years of working for others.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · May 19

I read Technopoly by Neil Postman over the last couple of days. I don't believe there's a better summary of the state we're in culturally. And he wrote it in 1992!

A five star review of Technopoly by Neil Postman on Goodreads:

'Superb, and far ahead of its time. The predictive power of Postman's analysis of technopoly has only grown as the personal computer attacked our culture, and then ran rampant when it was placed in our hot little hands by Steve Jobs and others.

Postman would no doubt have dismissive but witty things to say had he been alive to witness our umbilical relationship with 'devices' and the way language has bent to their will. We are all 'users' now, and social media is our drug; attention spans and context be damned, for we all go viral and 'like' what we like, the better to serve our advertising overlords.

Other reviews dismiss this book as curmudgeonly. I can only imagine the reviewers ignored all the nobility and wisdom of Postman's obvious regard for humanity's creativity, beauty and intelligence, which rises to a height in his peroration, which urges us to reinvent education to fight the disappearance of coherence.

A book for our time? Yes. Read it. Ideally in print.'

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 16h

This is straight-up bullshit - Lib Dems almost universally loathe party lists, and bow to no one in their nerdy stanning of the single transferable vote.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19h

That doesn't mean it definitely *will* happen everywhere in the same way, but the assumption really should be that it might, and that if we don't want that, we have to do something else beyond what we were doing.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19h

I just find it really weird that at this point in our shared history people are still going, 'nah, that would never happen', despite visible evidence pretty much everywhere that it is already happening, and very limited new efforts to collectively stop it happening.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19h

Wasabi (it's just the wrong kind of spicy for me, I'm afraid)
Possession (1981) - once is enough
Happy (Pharrell) - just awful

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 2d

Introduce yourself using only one food you refuse to eat, one movie you’ll never watch again, and one song you can’t stand

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19h

Just a ton of people who think 'passive voice' is the same as 'obfuscating language', mostly confused by reports of 'officer-involved shootings' per your example.

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Reposted by Tom King

🦇🤘 Rigg-or mortis 🔶️🏳️‍🌈 @rigg.lgbt · 22h

It's bloody exhausting living in grief and fear.

🧵⤵️

Grief because I used to be a citizen of a continent and now I'm trapped on a little island.

Fear because the vast majority of the media and political establishment in the UK are hell-bent on removing the human rights of my loved ones.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 3d

Labour are incapable of treating people with dignity and sensitivity, because their conception of how society and policy work relies on humans being no more than interchangeable units.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Government to consult on digital IDs for 13-year-olds

There has been a backlash to the announcement a UK-wide digital ID scheme will be introduced by 2029.

www.bbc.co.uk

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 5d

Today in "you'll never guess what this is a response to"

magatsrpedos.bsky.social @magatsrpedos.bsky.social · 6d

We humans have lost so much do to Christianity. We have lost our ability to respect other lives, we've lost our ability to understand the other lives on this planet.

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Reposted by Tom King

Toby Earle 🇺🇦 @tobyontv.bsky.social · 5d

if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 5d

Anyone who was at any point on a relatively busy discussion forum at any time in the early 2000s knows this first-hand from observing how moderation tended to develop and then be questioned by the more trollish posters.

The ppl who run social media weren't there because they don't like discussion.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

It has the feel of an article that had the best bits edited out of it.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

France may also have a bigger problem than the UK with illegal work/the informal economy, despite its ID card system, as mentioned in this briefing: migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/br...

People crossing the English Channel in small boats - Migration Observatory

This briefing examines the phenomenon of people crossing the English Channel in small boats.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

What's wrong with making biometric passports free to apply for? £220m per year, completely voluntary for British citizens.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

I bet you could get the Prince Charles Cinema in London to show it too (what do you say, @princecharlescinema.com?)

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

The hypocrisy thing has the problem of simply being true - anyone who asserts any actually moral belief or standard is going to fall short of it. There is no one who 100% matches the standards they claim to hold.

The answer to that can't be to give up on beliefs and standards. But it's expedient.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

But we do need to assert *some* universal mores. When we don't, usually out of embarrassment, it leaves the field open for those with no compunctions - the 'awful people'.

This is what is happening now: the power of tribe is being reasserted on one side, and there's a vacuum on the other.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

As an ex-religious person, one of the hardest things to let go of (as a political liberal) was the idea that morality is absolute and extrinsic. If morality is developed intrinsically within each human (much like meaning), what right do we have to hold everyone to a universal standard? Etc.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

I keep thinking about this from @jonnelledge.bsky.social and might have to write about it. It combines so many problems facing the liberal/left of politics:

1) lack of emotive story
2) fear of hypocrisy
3) individualism (morality 'from within')
4) technocratic bias

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 18d

forgive the double quote tweet, but... I increasingly feel like a big problem is the loss of the language of morality in politics? We're scared of it because awful people have historically used moral condemnation to be awful, but I do feel like you sometimes have to just go "this is just wrong"

Hannah Fearn @hannahfearn.bsky.social · 18d

It's also worth noting that Torsten Bell - ex of this particular parish - knew this to his core, yet sat there on the flipping tellybox defending NOT lifting it.

If the people who do this research and lobby for this change then go into government and...do nothing...where do we stand? I don't know.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

Ruin a book with a car

Much Silverado About Nothing

🦇🤘 Rigg-or mortis 🔶️🏳️‍🌈 @rigg.lgbt · 18d

Ruin a book with a car

The 4.50 From Paddington Has Been Cancelled And The Rail Replacement Bus Is Stuck In A Traffic Jam Because Some Idiot In A Porsche Caused A Pileup On the A Road

Dr. Emily Arndt 🏳️‍⚧️ @brachinus.bsky.social · 18d

Ruin a book with a car

Jurassic Parking

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 18d

Levelling up, but done by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in a new series of the Trip

Reposted by Tom King

Helene von Bismarck @helenebismarck.bsky.social · 18d

I don’t think that this is just labour people, but, researching attitudes towards minorities for the book I am currently writing, I was surprised how deeply engrained the conviction is among experts & politicians that things could never take a very ugly turn in the UK.
A perilous form of certainty.

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 19d

Quite. So many Labour people on this website visibly have no idea of just how bad things have got for ethnic minorities since they came on, and how their visible indifference lands.

Amrk @amrk.bsky.social · 19d

Also frankly I am quite desperate! A party that’s at best ambivalent on the question of whether I’m English and wants to deport my friends is 9 points ahead in the polls and the current leader is floundering and visibly out of his depth!

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19d

There's a serious suggestion of Phil Collins in there as well. Boggling.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19d

You have to laugh, or you'll cry, etc.

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 19d

In his newsletter this week ( open.substack.com/pub/jonn/p/w... ), @jonnelledge.bsky.social recalls of an old viral tweet, pictured below.

Which means I can’t now help but riff on how our current government would respond if Reform said something similar. So let’s imagine. 🧵

There’s a long forgotten viral tweet which someone calling themselves @WarrenIsDead posted all the way back in 2016. Here it is now:

American fascist: your going to the camps,
American Liberal, chuckling: ‘you’re’.

Reposted by Tom King

Alistair Carmichael MP @amcarmichaelmp.bsky.social · 19d

Worth a read by Ben Williams, on why Liberals should continue to argue against digital ID cards in the UK. Ben is the sort of Liberal who can properly articulate both the principled and practical issues at play here - we should all take note.

#StillNO2ID

Ben Williams @bpwilliams72.bsky.social · 20d

Some thoughts on digital ID cards.

substack.com/@bpwilliams7...

Still NO2ID

Why I would not support a shift in our policy on ID cards

substack.com

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 19d

If you see this, post a concert pic you took