5434a
1d ago
Shamima Begum is back in the news with news that the European Court of Human Rights are questioning the UK Home Office's decision to remove her citizenship on the basis that she may have been "groomed" and "trafficked" into joining ISIS.
In a document published by the ECHR earlier this month, it states that Ms Begum is challenging the decision to revoke her British citizenship under Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights - prohibition of slavery and forced labour.
The four questions posed by judges in Strasbourg to the Home Office, include: "Did the Secretary of State have a positive obligation, by virtue of Article 4 of the Convention, to consider whether the applicant had been a victim of trafficking, and whether any duties or obligations to her flowed from that fact, before deciding to deprive her of her citizenship?"
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Ms Begum "chose to go and support the violent Islamist extremists".
He added: "She has no place in the UK and our own Supreme Court found that depriving her of citizenship was lawful.
"It is deeply concerning the European Court of Human Rights is now looking at using the ECHR to make the UK take her back."
If the UK is manoeuvered into allowing Begum to return at the the behest of the European courts it will be political suicide for the government, an open goal for the far right, but what gets me is how it will foreseeably be consequently counterproductive for the very demographics that human rights activists seek to defend! It will pour fuel on reactionary sentiment and division. I think that the functional part of Labour understand this, and will be working hard to make sure it doesn't happen, but I worry that the activist section of the back benches will work against them, ignorant (wilfully?) of the prospect of ushering in a Reform government on a swelling tide of rightist sentiment. It's like a moral puritanism that denies the political reality of trade-offs. Sure, there might be a hard right UK government, but it won't be their fault - they stood against it!
5434a
1d ago
Has it stopped?
Sorry, I'm being flippant. I don't follow Israel/Palestine beyond it being the background radiation of international news for my entire life. As such it strikes me as almost humorous to predict it might re-ignite when its continual conflict appears as perennial as the sun rising.
5434a
11d ago
If anything I found it less culture warry and more entertaining than Knives Out 1 and 2, with 2 being particularly bad, but it's pretty clear at this point that assembling a spread of culture war punch bags and pitting them against each other is the established format for Knives Out.
The part that stood out to me the most was the church building. I didn't realise there were such textbook English parish churches in America with lych gates and yew trees and everything, and apparently they're Catholic(?). And now I've taken the time to check and apparently it was filmed in Essex, which makes a bit more sense.
5434a
12d ago
A partner with more resources can better nurture and educate their blank slate while a partner with less resources can't.
Now you might ask, fairly, "What does this have to do with TDS?" And it's a tough explainer
You've got that right on both counts.
To me it reads like a trademark rambling attempt to ""weave"".
"Before they died they thought I was bad, which obviously means they're crazy and wrong. And they're not really that famous anyway. Death is sad, but at the end of the day I'm the best. Sad. Best. RIP. "
It's less a deft weave and more like two postcards that have been jammed into a shredder at the same time.
Edit: On second thoughts I think it's simpler than that. There was a news headline that wasn't about Trump, and he wanted to divert the attention away from the news and on to himself. Mission accomplished.
5434a
20d ago
The critique I've seen of this idea is that while a paid platform would appear more trustworthy the same trustworthiness would make it equally valuable to marketers who would then pay the admission fee to exploit it.
5434a
1mo ago
Plenty of Christians and book lovers here. What are some notable, unusual or interesting variations on the bible that you've seen or own? Let's be honest, the commonplace optically-and-materially compressed version that is printed so very close to its cigarette grade paper stock isn't the most appealing format.
The two that I own are the Pocket Canon series, which is 20 of the major books broken out into small standalone pocket sized paperbacks, and The Illustrated Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb. At some point I'd like to get a collection of the Gustave Dore Bible illustrations and the Jefferson Bible.
Oh yeah, I've also got the audiobook narrated by James Earl Jones.
5434a
1mo ago
Due to the ratcheting restrictions on internet use I decided I'd try to make a free VPN using Oracle Cloud free tier to run a Tailscale exit node.
Now I'm stuck waiting for Oracle to "provision" my billing services so that I can upgrade to the PAYG tier because it turns out the fully free tier is so horribly oversubscribed and botted that it's basically unavailable.
5434a
1mo ago
Assuming your childhood was free from the internet did you never experience any degree of internal response to seeing a flash of nudity in a film, an underwear model in a clothing catalogue, or some other intrusion into your awareness?
5434a
1mo ago
Maybe you misunderstood the question. That doesnt explain why you think they already have those feelings.
I don't think I do understand the question, I thought "All common behaviours in my experience" explained why I think they had those feelings. I saw other kids in primary school behaving in ways that were motivated by a special affection that wasn't normal friendship. Add to that that some people are shy and there were probably other people who had those same feelings but didn't openly express them.
those attributions where made up on the flimisiest of pretexts and really just exist for the sake of the teasing
It was made up for the sake of teasing but the effectiveness of the teasing relies on its plausibility. We didn't tease each other about being bad at driving.
Outside of those kind of inferential observations there were the open admissions. You'd tell a friend that you liked a girl, or he'd tell you, or one of the girls would tell her friend to tell you that she liked your friend, and there was no confusion about what was meant by "liking" someone. All of those likings were directed at their opposite sex. All that together suggests to me that many kids can intuit which sex they are attracted to before reaching puberty. Without seeing these kinds of discussions on the internet I would have thought it was rare not to.
Out of interest, when you were a kid what internal response did you have when you happened upon risque images?
5434a
1mo ago
Let's say puberty begins around 12, that's plenty of time to pick up on the memeset around sexual attraction and compare it against what does and doesn't resonate with your own feelings.
The only thing I can think of that would make it confusing is if, like the writer, somebody found their own sex more attractive but the whole of society was prompting them with expectations to be interested in the other sex for whom they felt very little. In that case I can imagine the person wondering whether their feelings will change when they grow up and then getting hit with the elevated production of hormones at puberty and realising that there's no room for doubt; they like what they like even more than before. Or maybe if a kid had grown up with only siblings of the other sex and mistook their lack of fondness for them as extending to all members of that sex.
in what sense would you "like" them?
At its basic level in the undeveloped puppy-dog love sense. "Girl A <3 Boy B" written on a pencil case, or having a favourite pop singer who you like solely because of how nice they look instead of what their music is like, or wanting to play a pretend grown-up relationship role with one particular playmate, or childish jealousy/envy that that one particular person is playing that role with some other boy/girl, or focusing on one person and following them around and wanting to be involved in all their activities despite having no inherent interest in those activities, or kids teasing each other about who they "like". All common behaviours in my experience that can be seen as expressing the same instincts you see in adult attraction and relationships. I expect Desmond Morris has written on the subject in more detail.
5434a
1mo ago
A fully developed sexual consciousness no, but I think a rudimentary sexual inclination is expected, at least the bare minimum of knowing whether you "like" girls or boys. I think the alternative that you wouldn't know until you've reached puberty is harder to imagine.
Or is it the "before I could spell my name" part? I mean, her name isn't that hard to spell but we're hearing stories about people who leave higher education with minimal literacy so it's not impossible that she was a slow learner, although I'm guessing most of those don't become writers. It's probably just a turn of phrase.
5434a
1mo ago
Alerting you that it's running out of power instead of leaving you unaware that it has silently failed is the alarm functioning properly.
Removing a smoke alarm is practically the same amount of work as replenishing or replacing, more if you have to patch and paint any holes. They're not expensive, the first place I checked sells a twin pack for £15.
I can say from experience it's better coming home to the news that you'll have to clean up smoke damage in the kitchen than whatever the outcome might have been if we hadn't had a smoke alarm.
5434a
1mo ago
Over on DSL, someone stated that the first thing they did when they moved into their house was to remove all the smoke detectors so the damn things wouldn't annoy you in the middle of the night with battery beeps
So they didn't say that they removed the smoke alarms because the pencil-pushing bureaucrats at city hall are trying to dictate how to provision their home, it was merely to defeat and negate the proper functioning of the alarm. I expect they'll be replacing their fuses with scrunched up tinfoil next.
5434a
1mo ago
Malformed pop therapy terminology.
I've got mental health = I've got mental health problems
My child is neurodiverse = My child is not neurotypical
It gives me anxiety = It makes me feel anxious
He's anxious-avoidant = Either I'm anxious, or he's avoidant, or both
5434a
1mo ago
Started The Rise and Fall of the British Nation by David Edgerton.
I don't usually read history, I picked up this book on British 20th century political history in search of some reasons for why Britain has seemed to so consistently drop the ball since around 1960. It's doing a sterling job of putting me to sleep each night but I'm still in the early chapters dealing with the history of our political parties so that's probably par for the course.
5434a
1mo ago
You're right, I immediately started thinking of the exceptions after posting. Thanks for linking to the proper terminology.
5434a
1mo ago
an homage
Using "an" for any h word. I feel like I've woken up in a different universe. Saying "an", like in "an 'ot cup of tea", fine, but I frequently see it happening in professional writing now.
Homage is maybe the least objectionable one as people tend to French-ify the pronunciation anyway.
5434a
1mo ago
I get that, I think the successful translation of the character names between languages is pretty essential to its success. But "Elonmus" is so specific and current and implicitly culture-warry. It takes you out of the story. Maybe it works better in German..?
5434a
1mo ago
I didn't realise they were still making new Asterix books.
"Elonmus" goes to an orgy of rich people, how witty
I had a look on Wikipedia, it says the character is called Upwardlimobilus (I assume that's in the English version). Is "Elonmus" your own re-naming? It's hard to tell when apparently there is also a character called Nellia Furtado. Seems odd to put in these kinds of contemporary pop references.
5434a
2mo ago
Finished What Not. Spoiler: The heroine followed her heart and the oiks rose up and bloodlessly unseated the Minister for Brains. Possibly the lowest jeopardy dystopia I've ever read.
Now reading a Christina Rosetti collection, mostly for Goblin Market but it's short enough that I might as well finish it. Recurring themes of nature and the perils of being a sensitive teenage woman (and not a man-stealing whore like that skank bitch Maude).
5434a
2mo ago
Cat hair has a scent that scares rodents
I wonder if that's why visiting cats like to look inside our shed when it's open. It's the only place we've ever found mice, and it's the only place that is untomcatinated never inhabitated by cats, and so while the scent of cats might scare the mice perhaps it's the residual scent of mice that interests the cats.
We always used an old fashioned mousetrap - you know, the type where the boot kicks the marble onto the seesaw that flips the diver through the bathtub and triggers the basket to wiggle down the pole.
All sides have their accelerationists who imagine that just x% more of what they hate will shock the masses out of their false consciousness. What that strategy ignores is that the polity can remain unfavourable longer than you can remain politically relevant.
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