Oh she absolutely did. Just like she did the “i never said Hermione *wasn’t * Black” thing, despite having described her cheeks as “pink” on more than one occasion.

But that’s not what the people i was quoting mean. They’re doing the “straight, white, cis, man is the default, and anything deviating from that needs an explicit in-universe explanation”.

There was a thing that did the rounds a while back which was variations on “what race are you? White or political?”, “what’s your sexuality? Straight or political?”, etc.

it’s basically that. Straight guy? Fine. Gay guy? “But what’s the *reason *he’s gay? How is it relevant to the plot?”

Note the quotation marks

Yes, i was explaining why the same isn’t true in the UK, but that that also doesn’t mean that we can just sit back and relax like it isn’t a possibility down the road

Me neither. That’s why i put it in quotes to make it clear i was aping stupid objections.

Brexit isn‘t really relevant to the UK. ATM Reform, the most far-right party, is polling very well. As in „would become the ruling party if an election were called today“ well. They‘re also starting to get defectors from the hertofore bigger right-wing party (whose leader literally just said at the party conference that the UK should have it‘s own ICE squads doing what the US one is).

Some of the fearmongering is overwrought - especially the characterisation of Labour as being equivalent because they are acting in some utterly reprehesible ways in a stupid and doomed effort to court Reform voters - but it‘s a threat that should be taken seriously.

The good news is that the next election is 4 years away. If Trump fails in that time, or if the US gets so unahamdedly fascist that even the most denialist person can‘t deny it and it seriously harms the US on the international stage, then perhaps the British right-wing politicians will fall out of love with trying to ape Trump and the punters will see the warning signs and quietly shift back leftwards (or will crawl back in their holes in an atmosphere of „actually it isn‘t okay to say that out loud“).

I think also we‘ll need the Your party to definitively collapse so as not to split the vote on the left and for Starmer himself to resign and someone like Andy Burnham to take over (although he‘s just flubbed that one) in order to make Labour electable again.

Or there‘s the other option of Labour actually introducing something like proportional representation before the next election and thereby limiting the power of a party like Reform.

Point is, there are ways out of this mess, and there‘s time for it to happen. And we‘re definitely not where the US is, and the idea of a NeoNazi coalition seems far-fetched even under a potential Farage leadership. But at the same time, there is definitely cause for serious concern here in the UK, because there are definitely those in power or near power who would very much like to be where Trump is now.

„But what‘s the plot reason for them being gay? I don‘t mind gay people being in something, but if there‘s not a reason for it, then it‘s just pandering!“

I‘ve spent far more free time than I should have watching let‘s play videos of this. But I‘ve not downloaded it myself because after putting around 200 hours into Vampire Survivors and buying the first two lots of DLC I‘ve burnt myself out on the genre. This has got a couple of twists, not including the fact that it‘s 3D, but in the end it doesn‘t really appeal as something to play myself.

Just checked Outer Wilds, which is deemed „slighly woke“ because the race of aliens to which you belong all use they/them pronouns. They do note that the race of aliens you‘re studying all use he/him/she/her pronouns.

Here‘s the thing - your race has evolved from amphibians. Hermaphroditism and spontaneous sex-change is a well-established trait in some species of amphibians. The other race are mammals, where such examples are much rarer.

For it to actually be a „woke“ thing, rather than world-building, you‘d have to have one of the mammals be referred to as „they“. Or, perhaps, one of your race referred to as „he“ or „she“. As it is, it suggests that gender is either non-existent or fluid amongst your species and therefore it makes no sense to use that as an identifier, and gender exists amongst the other species and therefore it does make sense to use that as an identifier.

And, truthfully, we don‘t know, because other than a couple of references to people „flirting“ with each other (in both species) and you being referred to as „hatchling“ rather than being given a name, sex gender, reproduction, etc. doesn‘t come up at all.

Even the defence is bullshit. The „Roman salute“ was invented for a film and almost immediately adopted by Italian fascists. The Nazis copied it from them.

So, it is a „Roman Salute“. Because that‘s exactly the same thing as a Nazi salute.

Maybe he means that he admires Mussolini more than Hitler?

Why is it denoted by a smiley face, rather than „Ah“?

I think they give the game away by listing being neurodivergent as a negative. A negative which is in and of itself “rude”.

“Your brain processes information differently to mine? That’s rude! Why would you deliberately annoy me like that?”

One of the hopes for a Labour government was that they would roll back the restrictions on our right to protest…

I think he thinks „space is cold, therefore we can use space cold to cool servers“

I don’t think that is a unique position

I was brought in as a contractor for a week at a private school once here in the UK. The food was okay but on the nicer/posher end of „nothing special“. But what did strike me was that between two periods one of the girls felt peckish so just wandered in to the kitchen and made herself cheese on toast. Nobody treated that like it was anything unusual.

Thank you

They‘re probably okay with the price because the number of private users will dwarf the commercial users.

As for businesses shutting it down - any business which is using it has already bought the hype. They‘re not using it because it‘s actually effective. They‘re much more likely to crack down on workers than they are to ban AI all together.

I do agree that it won‘t work out in the end, not because this particular strategy is stupid, but because the products don‘t work and no strategy could work.

Kinda looks like if she & Emma Watson had a baby. And then that baby became a haunted waxwork.

This is also why you‘ll see/hear the verb „unalive“ and have people refer to „seggs“.

And there‘s still no compelling use-case for the average consumer. Coders and scientists? Can be. But most people don‘t really have a use for it in most situations, even in business contexts. It‘s mostly a solution in search of a problem, and even then it‘s so unreliable that even things trying to sell you it as a solution have to add the disclaimer that you shouldn‘t use it for anything that‘s remotely important.

So even if the costs were markedly less than they are, there‘s still no real path to profitability because there‘s no real call for it.

The only use I‘ve found as a consumer is using something like Perplexity as a search engine. And that‘s not a testament to how good Perplexity is, but instead a testament to how bad other search engines have become. Perplexity just avoids things like SEO and is mostly quite good at finding sources which aren‘t themselves AI-generated.

And…I really see a near future in which AI-SEO becomes a thing and Perplexity et. al. become just as useless as google.