Ertebolle

There’s still hope for a Tom Bombadil miniseries that resurrects those scenes. Whether it would be good is TBD, but maybe Amazon pulls an Andor and gives somebody the creative freedom to make it that way.

That comment makes me think of the X-Files episode with J. Peterman

Suddenly, there is a deafeningly loud crackle of lighting in front of me, causing me to nearly fall out of my seat as I let out a cry of surprise. Floating some two or three feet above the sidewalk is a black and blue seam of electricity, a hovering slit in the fabric of space and time that pours outward with a sizzling heat.

“Alex!” calls a voice from beyond the strange universal rift. I can barely make out the figures shape, but it appears to be a massive, sentient coin; one pound to be exact.

“Hello?” I question, shielding my eyes from the electrical storm that appears to be occurring right before me. “Who are you?”

“There’s no time!” yells the giant coin from the other side of the rift. “Come with me!”

I’m utterly horrified and, if I’m going to be honest, my first instinct is to immediately turn around and run away. It’s only then that I notice something brilliant and burning through the hole in space-time. Within the rift I can see The Parliament, or what used to be The Parliament, as the entire building roars with a towering flame.

“Is that what it looks like?” I call out.

“Yes!” screams the giant sentient coin. “We need your help, Alex. I can’t hold this open much longer!”

Suddenly, all of the fear leaves and is replaced with a powerful, frantic energy. Britain needs me!

Without another thought, I jump up from the bench and run forward, diving through the trans universal slice and ending up carried to a hellish landscape of fire and smoke on the other side.

“Where am I?” I ask this mysterious pound. “What’s happening?”

“You’re in the future,” explains the giant sentient monetary instrument, “but it’s not safe here. Follow me!”

I get that, I just think ‘gender critical’ doesn’t do the job; it’s bland and not catchy, and the ‘critical’ overlaps with ‘critical race theory’ which a lot of people have been brainwashed to disagree with.

Whatever mileage they may get out of claiming oppression, TERF is memorable, fun to say, rhymes with a bunch of other ridiculous things like Nerf and Smurf, and is instantly Google-able. And to a typical observer, a bunch of old rich straight cis white ladies complaining that they’re being oppressed is very hard to believe. (and of course the Google-ability also means that when somebody insists they’re not a TERF you can ask them to name which specific points of TERFiness they disagree with)

It’s a suitable moniker for a crazy fringe movement, and a powerful piece of ammunition against them in and of itself.

Interesting.

My personal take is that - as with so many other conservative groups - they’re going to act like victims regardless of what we call them, and referring to them politely has the effect of legitimizing their position. I suppose to a naive bystander it might make it seem like two groups of crazy people yelling at each other, but I’d still take that over a polite talk show roundtable any day.

obviously doesn’t contribute much to the discussion.

On the contrary, calling J. K. Rowling a malevolent rich old F.A.R.T. elevates the discussion greatly.

You can honestly just draw the box and consider it de-swastika’d, the other steps are to make it look pretty.

What if you could get hard using mints you ordered from a website with a short name and expensive typography?

“Peace in our time”

Batman oppresses crime and everybody thinks he’s cool, I don’t see why oppressing fascists should be any different

“The gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy. It’s a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don’t pull away or you’ll feel that poison.”

“Why does this hot dog have a bunch of seagull-beak-sized bite marks in it?”

“Bite marks? No, those are… steam holes, because all our food is so fresh that there’s still steam coming out of it”

I have to think that in a fast-moving situation like this, a capable physician - and with two billionaires fighting I’m sure they’d have someone really good - could work out a way to let them both die without technically doing anything that would be considered malpractice.

Or, just YOLO it and figure that no jury will convict you.

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

$36.45/kg -> like $16.50 a pound, but let’s assume it’s Australian dollars (bit cheaper than Canadian) and say it’s US$11/pound. Still an awful lot to pay for peanuts, which you can buy in bulk for less than $1/pound even if they’re very good ones.

A giant cylindrical alien thing?

Well yeah, and the 3/5 clause was essentially a compromise whereby the disproportionately populous areas agreed to accept partial credit for the share of their population that was enslaved.

Oh certainly; my point was simply that in a system where population = influence, letting in a new group with several times as many people as all of your existing groups put together means that that new group effectively takes over.

Gruber’s position is somewhere between ‘internally inconsistent’ and ‘distressingly naive’; quote:

On point 2, I’m fine with starting Facebook with two strikes against it. Put them on a short leash. They start fucking around, Mastodon instances should start de-federating from their product.

So he agrees that the first time Facebook does anything wrong we should promptly de-federate from them, but somehow seems to think that they… won’t? Facebook being allowed to federate is contingent on them being absolutely perfect model citizens, when Facebook have never been model citizens of any group they’ve ever participated in?

The thing is that this isn’t really a marriage of equals; if Meta joins the Fediverse then Meta will swallow the Fediverse, simply by dint of having several orders of magnitude more users.

It would be akin to India applying to become the 51st US state; if we let them in, they’d end up controlling 80% of the House and the Electoral College and the US wouldn’t really be the US anymore.