Just thought that the difference here could be explained by the fact Western economies are more service heavy.

I use it very actively, but almost exclusively for work questions with concrete answers. "Do Terraform tags on a Sagemaker domain propagate to the underlying EFS volume?" "What could be a bash one liner to return the name of the subfolder with the larger number of files in it, nested?" Etc.

TIL that the share of people remaining childless isn't actually rising, or at least not wildly so. Share of British women who didn't have children by the age of 45 is virtually the same for those who are both 45 and 85 today. There is no crisis here at all, yet this is the group that gets the blame

"How many divisions did you say the Pope has?"

I suspect I am much more conservative on the small boats and unregulated arrivals issues in general than the BlueSky median, but boasting about "searching people's mouths" like that is very very bad. Absolutely bleak, and don't even believe that no one should ever be searched like that.

How to build a modern functional growing economy: 1) Depend on votes of pensioners from peripheral transfer dependent regions 2) Endlessly piss off people who live in your largest urban centres and attack their industries 3) Get rid of all the foreigners 4) Singapore is achieved!

You're not going to build Singapore on Thames on the votes of people who live in Hartlepool. But I guess people are going to have to learn that the hard way.

Good!

Really unsettling to see Putin visibly happy and enjoying the attention he receives. Gone are the days of him comically gripping the table or disappearing for weeks to avoid having to provide a commentary. Casually threatened to nuke Europe again btw.

"To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom." -- Samuel Johnson, actually writing about the Falklands, I do not lie to you, back in 1771 www.samueljohnson.com/falklands.html

Went to see an old friend, which was also Lizzy's first trip to Central London.

This week’s Nimby Watch: how just three people managed to get a popular kids park and skate park bulldozed, and themselves a £130,000 payout – and all their neighbours an 84% council tax bill hike. capx.co/nimby-watch-...

Liberal about the global context that is the US (and by extension, the UK) affairs while conservative about the local one (your own country or home country) is A TYPE.

> looking for a new right wing party > asking the influencer if that is a new party or the Tories > she doesn't understand > pull out the graphs explaining the Tory policies of the last 14 years > she laughs and says 'it is a based new populist party sir' > cast a vote > it's the Tories

True even if the government happens to be bad. You can see that in how the news about immigration falling sharply are presented (which is something those people declared was their top priority for decades, and apart from Brexit it's the first time they are getting something there in like 30 years).

Putting on makeup on a commuter train - better or worse than no headphones tiktoks?

We can't know why the mysterious cable incidents have stopped - or indeed whether they will resume. But whatever the cause for the pause, the Baltic Sea nations' efforts to patrol, surveil, cooperate and communicate are impressive.

Been reading a lot of Philip Roth lately and it occurs to me that there was a mid-twentieth century belief in the transcendent power of sex that's about as dead as Manicheeism now.

Noticed today that a primary school in the area had added green parakeets to its logo. Such a nice touch - there are indeed quite a few parakeets there!

This is an awful situation, but stories like this really need to come with an explainer of the rules that apply here because what the public gets from them otherwise is "visa holders on low incomes can claim benefits, so you were lying when you were saying they could not do that".

Cross-country differences in perceptions about AI -- Chinese are highly positive across age groups and think it will help address improtant societal challenges US and UK are much more negative with low-income residents in every country much more concerned than high-income residents

Honestly it's funny that he is *quite literally* saying "deregulate and reduce the burden of taxation on business to create jobs" and nobody on the left will criticise him. Good.

It does feel like half the stories in the UK press only make sense if you follow Enoch1488, a peadophile on twitter who they have decided is the voice of True Working Class Brits

Had to add a small change to it today and realised I should I have called it `batt-plug`.

"Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it."

I’m sorry but if “delivering food” isn’t the kind of job that robots are allowed to take then what is the point of even inventing robots

strangely passive language from the leader of a major, significantly armed european power

She didn't ask for her husband to be killed, but then again she didn't have to declare herself the head of organisation which in turn calls itself the resistance. Just waiting until Putin dies and hoping the next guy will allow them to get their 10% of the vote is not that.

Have to say it is a very good video. Something about the theatre backstage being a very natural environment for the left so it just works? Plus, focusing on "beating Reform" rather than taking the easy route by overly focusing on the Westminster incumbent in your local elections ad deserves a nod.

For many policies there's a sympathetic edge case immediately elevated to prominence as a typical scenario, see "a disabled old woman with a lifeline ULEZ-incompliant car", or more recently "someone whose house just went up in value", but for 2 child cap cherrypicking is reversed to extreme negative

The 'public services' the public endlessly demands need to be understood as pensions, heathcare, potholes repair and policing. Everything else is wasteful 'welfare'.

Saw a mention of Southport stabbings yesterday and couldn't stop thinking about that for a while, got to say that having my own baby daughter now deepens the emotional response. It doesn't mean that I used to think it was just statistics, but have to admit it hits completely differently still.

Torn between deep sympathy for the widow, and laughing hysterically at the irony of the whole situation. www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/2565372...

Miles and miles and miles of optical fiber left by attack drones in Ukrainian fields, it's like Shelob's lair.

If you think Britain is welded to the US in a specifically inconvenient position, spare a thought for Canada.

If you are interested what the BBC meant by that, I read the article for you, and it is about *not increasing personal allowance*. Yes, you got it right! The reasoning is that if you earn less than 12K now but will be earning more at some point... you will have to pay income tax.

Another way of looking at this, of course, is that if you took the triple lock out of the equation, the benefits bill would very likely roughly be increasing in line with projected inflation *if that*

We all dislike how the government seems to be guided by polls, but lifting 2 child benefit cap is firmly opposed by the public inc. by the majority of Lab voters. This is a bold move and a gift to the young - the only group that is net positive about lifting it. Give the government credit for it.

I just know this person is on BlueSky.

For now Europe dominates the global export of pharmaceuticals. Source: buff.ly/6bWCvGj

Not a fan of certain Labour policies, but all of that happening so quickly shows how powerful the sovereign Parliament is. Makes Patel, Braverman and Jenrick who were yelling about "cutting immigration" non-stop and did nothing look absolutely pathetic. Can't feel good to their supporters.

Got into an argument with someone who insisted "the average person in the UK can't afford food". Very weird feeling because by saying it's a manipulative lie you come across as someone defending the current (dire) state of affairs, but god some people are absolutely addicted to poverty porn.

Glasgow? Wait, I was reliably informed that something like this can only happen in England (ew).

When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, the UK economy was bigger than China and India combined.

To be honest while it is refreshing seeing the media remembering that racism is bad and is worth mentioning, I also feel that Farage is himself a relic of a bygone era, and whoever replaces him won't even bother to deflect that. He is the last reactionary leader on whom this pressure works at all.

Tbh Britain will have an excess of plumbers by then because woke universities and lanyard jobs will be no more.

The latest threads by Will Stancil are all about that the housing crisis is made up.......…. Choosing to understand it as something that might indeed be true in the US of A (even though the same arguments are used in the same debate here in Britain as well).

Speaking of corruption, Russia had jailed a bunch of its top MoD officials + governor of the invaded Kursk region + one of the most successful Russian generals, all on corruption charges. Somehow this doesn't signal an imminent collapse to commentators in the same way Ukraine corruption scandals do.