Was there a book involving Contact where the big bad guy wasn't a plutocrat within the military-industrial-political complex?

Even the Azad game in PoG was a metaphor for capitalism; the winner became emperor. And there weren't secret paedophile, there were oppressed genders.

The man is a dipshit

Leaids... the title was in the photo.

And the ones like McLurk who search their pseudonyms...

I tweeted "sports gemma" back in the day (in reference to Kellie Harrington having one of her GBNews racist/anti-trans moments) and yer man in Brazil quote tweeted me looking for sympathy about how he was being bullied by the left

Also, Karp was always a loon. He didn't turn Maga, his (Theil funded) operation has been oppressing brown people and killing innocents since Obama's time

The only interesting part of what Gladwell writes is the hunting down of his errors.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4191...

Brilliant movie. Though every time I think of it, I think of the couple on their first date who were sitting beside me in the IFI. I doubt there was a second one.

Oh I know, they obfuscate the problem with talk about holidays but the people who demand such special treatment are usually 'undocumented workers' who don't think that description applies to white people

A problem that only affects people who can afford to take three months of holidays every six months is not a problem

All about avoiding injury. Figure out what you're comfortable with the first week. Then add 10-15% each week. If you're only able for 1km consistently it's a slow start, but you get there. If it's 2km, then it'll take you half the time to get there.

Then don't stop at 5km, keep adding 15% each week

The actual policy regarding blocking people may require an FOI (if it isn't public), but if there isn't one it could be a useful action if it forces them into actually having a policy (which would avoid those scenarios where a comms person simply blocks users on a whim).

you could put in a subject access request to see if they were talking about you (I think @tupped.bsky.social had some fun with that, back in the day).

The whole rental thing creates different problems, I know a candidate in the locals last year who was doing heaps of community work with people, and then come election season, loads of them were no longer living in the area so they just weren't there to give them a vote.

It's so much easier to be dealing with middle class people who want to get their trees trimmed and complain about something they read in the Irish Times.

When the half that are grand are >80% of the vote there's fuck all interest in the rest

It does, low turn out areas create loads of problems for campaigns. They take loads of time, there's few votes, and they generate loads of requests for help, only some of which you can deliver on, which creates bad feeling - so candidates only go there in desperation.

I'd be surprised if the Russians treat their wars any differently.

Parenthetically, cycling across Serbia, I'd spotted more pictures of Putin than Vučić despite there having been a general election only two months before

They were the most open to discussion, but because their culture had made the wars taboo, because they'd been a child, they'd no background to fit it into.

Others just made comments about "Bad things happened during war" and then didn't interrogate it any more, willfully censoring what they knew.

I was in Serbia in 2016, and did a good bit of talking to people younger than I about the Balkan wars (the geopolitical backdrop to my teens).

One person had only heard of the Seige of Sarajevo three years earlier because they'd met someone from there. They were an open person in a closed society.