The Little Platoon

We need to talk about Superman... youtu.be/-UyhC_yGU8g

A sizeable part of the UK economy is kept afloat by a policy of Keynesian Incompetence. The government cannot actually build anything - the cost estimate for this project (a tunnel and a couple of junctions) ballooned to over £1bn - but it can keep consultants, lawyers, advisors, lobbyists and archeologists in gainful employment by starting projects anyway. It is more politically palatable to pay people to talk about digging holes for a few years than it is to put middle class professionals on the dole, even though it amounts to much the same thing in the end. (Apropos of nothing, this £179,000,000 could have funded the NHS for about 8 hours.)

Somehow - unlike pretty much any ballet production since 1892 - I think he'll live.

We often make a fuss about accurate labelling on all sorts of products, whether it's Halal meat or calorie counts for chocolate. I think it should be compulsory to label every single product with the amount of the price that's attributable to tax. It's one thing to abstractly state that VAT is 20%, that stamp duty is this or that rate, that a windfall tax on energy companies sits at this percentage of profit. It's another thing entirely to have a handy little pie chart on everything that shows how much the government is adding to your cost of living. Businesses would benefit because it would (accurately) shift much of the blame for high prices onto the real culprit. The public would benefit because their vague political preferences would have a much clearer price mechanism displaying the cost of their "free" stuff. Damn near any political party not religiously wedded to high taxation would benefit because it would free them of the burden of arguing for lower taxes (at which they are uniformly terrible). (I'd also be in favour of an annual itemized receipt - akin to a pension statement - sent to every household breaking down precisely where and on what your tax money is being spent.)

As Gandalf famously says in Fellowship: "I searched everywhere for the creature Gollum, but Kate Winslet found him first."

YouTube is doing its very best to make my work impossible. The latest video - which was majorly impacted by absurd copyright claims anyway (hence it being just one third of its original length) - got taken down DAYS after going live. Which, needless to say, is not ideal. I have appealed it and it is now visible again. Videos getting taken down generally destroys them in the algorithm, which is bad enough already at the moment. So if you haven't seen it yet or if you're looking for background noise, here it is again. (It is now in an appeal window which means YouTube gets all the ad revenue. I do love my job.) youtu.be/cElFDM6ijVU?si…

I should note that I do not use AI to make silly faces in my thumbnails, this is just how he looks.

There was supposed to be one long video on Stranger Things 5 Vol. 2, but YouTube has made that pretty much impossible to release. So it's coming out in three parts instead. First one premieres today from 8pm UK / 3pm WW3 Eastern Theatre Time. It'll be followed by the last Resident Evil Requiem stream before I gleefully uninstall it from my PC. youtu.be/cElFDM6ijVU?si…

My fondest memory of this game was when the Pope excommunicated me for pre-emptively defending myself against the existence of French people. I invaded Europe and conquered pretty much the whole thing (good luck fighting me off with bishops you bunch of flowery twats) until I reached Rome. I took all of Italy and made it happy and profitable, which no Italian has ever managed to do, and killed the Pope. Being a child, it hadn't yet occurred to me that the Pope is actually a species of knotweed, possibly of extrasolar origin, and can never be truly destroyed. So I ended up creating several elite and swift continental armies with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing Popes wherever they should appear. All because they refused to accept that France is rightfully English.

@svnsorbit Sooooon: youtube.com/live/HEcQBhKQW…

@PlatoonPod lol also what time (est) are you planning to stream today?

"I just thought it was funny, but it was terrorist content" is such a Peak UK sentence.

It is now taking YouTube between 10 and 36(!) hours to go from "your video has cleared all checks and is fine" to "lol no blocked it". Everything - from bizarre and broken copyright to it not notifying subscribers about pretty much anything - is so much worse than even a year ago. It's just not fun anymore.

I appear to have ratioed the Prime Minister. Please write to me at my new address: Belmarsh Prison.

@Edgy_Sandwich The lesson is that women with no balls are useless.

@PlatoonPod Usually you guys have a better track record of female prime ministers than this. What happened?

Summing up the British approach to Iran here: 1) US asks to use British bases, we say no. 2) Tell everyone we weren't involved and hope they leave us alone. 3) oh dear, they didn't leave us alone. They're shooting missiles at us. 4) claim that the only way to stop this and protect British citizens is to destroy the missiles at source. 5) allow the Americans to use our bases to destroy the missiles at source. 6) refuse to help destroy the missiles at source, even though we just said destroying them at source is the only way to end the threat to British citizens. 7) tell everyone we're not involved and hope they'll leave us alone.

This is not a comment on the merits and demerits of striking Iran generally, it's just that the Prime Minister has no thoughts. I am not convinced he is human. He's like one of those tube men you see flapping around outside a car dealership. He has to be inflated by a team of lawyers before every public appearance. You will find more strategic thinking playing Civilization on Settler difficulty.

YouTube is currently telling me there are no problems on any version I upload. Then, 8-10 hours later, it decides there are about 1500 problems. (In reality, of those 1500, there might be 5 that are actually a problem, but it won't tell me which 5 they are.) So I have absolutely no idea.

@PlatoonPod Yo when's the new stranger things video coming out? Did youtube ever tell you what the problem was?

I like the sound of this subscription model. You shouldn't get access to state services if you don't pay. And you shouldn't have to pay if you don't use state services.

On the upside, it appears everyone's at war today, so at least there's still something to watch.

The autopsy has been delayed because fuck YouTube, I hate my job.

@Waldrada The hell sort of weird-ass time zone do you live in?!

@PlatoonPod Premieres in 13 hours March 1 at 5:00 AM On a Sunday. ... Dammit Platoon. I'll see you then, I need to go load up on Monster.

The autopsy of Stranger Things Season 5 continues tomorrow with Volume 2. Premiere goes live from 4pm British / 11am Eastern Time (a Paramount Company). Here is a trailer. Link is below.