The Brexit referendum was ten years ago.
The legal voting age here is 18.
That means there are people in their late-ish 20s who were not allowed to vote in that, but have took the brunt of its impact as entry level jobs collapsed and higher education turned into a clusterfuck.
Well, if we're going to ban having social media accounts for under-16s, I guess we'll also have to ban parents publicly posting photos of under-16s and using them as "content"? Yes?
But you see, those local councils aren't *banning* Pride, they're just not funding it! Very sensible, saves taxpayer money!
Well, this year, that's the case.
They'll not fund it now, then order everywhere to stop promoting it, then ban the pins and flags as "political" at official events, then, "oh, what a shame, we do support you but we have concerns about that application to hold an event so it can't go ahead..."
And *then* they ban it outright everywhere.
Citation: *gestures at history*
My trick remains answering trivia questions before the question is finished because I've learned your opponent is the quiz compiler, not the questions, and trivia outside of memorising sports scores is a finite resource.
"Which golden age actress was also a-"
"Hedy Lamarr."
"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT!??!"
My high-powered, executive-level, breadwinning wife's current party trick is that if you name any British comedian, she'll tell you the four others that appeared on Taskmaster with them.
The "we need a Military Pride Month!!!" people are going to be in for the shock of their fucking lives when they find out that you can, actually, have one, but they don't just magically happen and, in fact, require some effort and organisation.
And I think anyone in the military will want to think hard about whether they want a celebration planned by people whose peak artistic ability is zip-tagging a cheap nylon 🇬🇧 to a lamp-post and painting two thin slivers of red on a roundabout.
"You can't support sex workers because sex work harms society."
So does mining. Everything it does and creates is pretty damn harmful. You still support striking miners when their bosses neglect and abuse them. This is not fucking difficult stuff.
Le Guin only considered two groups of people: the ones who walk away from Omelas, and the ones who stay.
But the real world tells us that there's a third group, who think if they have it so good by torturing just the one child, imagine how awesome the economy would be if they could use five, ten, perhaps even hundreds of children. Perhaps they'd sell courses on how to childmaxx your own, private Omelas.
David Attenborough: "And each penguin chick has a unique call that can be identified by the parents from amongst hundreds of others."
Me: "Bullshit!"
[Later, at the park]
"Daaaad!"
"DAD!!"
"DAAAaaAAD!"
"Dddaaaddd!?"
"DAAD!"
"DdaaaaaadD!"
"DaaAaAAAD!!"
Yep, that one's mine.
Wat you mean there's 'nao such fing' as a 'British Accent'? You havin a girrarf guv'nor? Evryone speaks wiv a British arccent raand 'ere.
It's not without considerable and apt irony that I completely forgot I had a copy of There Is No Antimemetics Division.
I think this is why some GenAI use irks me *way* more than others. In some cases I might even think "that's cool, actually". Obviously it's a scale, and I think the latter is much rarer, unfortunately, but you can see immediately if it's been used to augment someone's efforts, or replace it entirely.
I saw that photo of someone writing "if your event flyer is AI, I'm not going", and someone pointing out that it's about a betrayal of effort. I think that's about right. You expect someone to give up an afternoon to turn up to your event, and you can't make your own flyer? It raises a red flag that you haven't put effort into the event either.
Not everyone will have the time and experience or finance to make something stunning, but we want to see some willingness to take it seriously.
Though, honestly, I think naming your twitter account "Iter Intellectus" is worthy of bullying just on its own. 🤮
Online discourse is just people pretending to not understand things, exhibit 82,616.
If a giant flaming meteor was coming to wipe out all life on earth and, through some magical convoluted and utterly insane mechanism, the only way to stop it was for everyone on earth to buy one fewer sock each year, we'd be instantly flooded with thousands of people proudly bragging on the Internet about how they're now going to buy hundreds of socks *right now* because the libs can't tell them what to do.
"Let's do local taxation for local services."
"Good plan."
"But let's do it by household."
"Right-"
"And they have to inform us of everything."
"So can they-"
"It'll be slightly different in every area."
"Okay, but what if-"
"Then we'll need a lot of complex and kinda weird discounts and exemptions for loads of different circumstances."
"And that will be administered by?"
"The dumbest people we can hire."
"Brilliant."
It's very typical of the English media to try and get Zack Polanski on non-payment of council tax. If we restricted the political franchise to people who have, at no point ever fucked up council tax in any way, we'd be allowed to elect, like, 8 people.
Moved county? Moved house? Rented? Gone from student to not-a-student? Had your council do a "major IT upgrade project"? Changed benefits? Had more than one address? You've probably fucked up your council tax.
It's partly true of all degrees, of course.
It's just that Biosciences runs such across such huge gamut from zoology to molecular biochemistry that there's no in-demand "biologist" career path in the same way you get chemist or chemical engineer.
It's in fact quite a challenge for the subject to deal with.
People are often quick to ask what career you can get after studying English Lit., or History, or the dreaded Gender Studies. And fair question: there is no set career path. You study it because you're interested, and the degree equips you with a range of skills that are applicable in multiple careers.
But here's the interesting one: that's also 100% true of *biology* degrees and no one ever questions that.