StupidDiaries

steffen has depression because he's getting mogged by this reflective Chad in the foreground

@cljack they've reinvented common law marriage from first principles lol

!!! they've invented speed camera fines for wasting women's time

@anglofuturist i'm fine with local devolution if it is on historic, not constantly changing boundaries and you make trying to pass on blame to the national government on local issues a crime punishable by flogging

Devolution is shit, and we should be reversing it. We are not a large country, too much decentralisation will be a bad thing. You won't end up with Japanese-style prefectures. You'll have 100 "metro mayors", who are accountable to 100 "regional assemblies", and nothing gets done.

@Kordell43106375 @axeman4ty @anglofuturist stupid antagonistic labour relations and extremely stupid free trade worship killed off industry, but a welshman was so obviously worse off in 1990 then in 1979, lol.

@axeman4ty @anglofuturist Thatcher did not kill the industries of Wales. The industries of the country had been declining for a century prior.

@poiThePoi @NewLeftEViews most people don't die from the weather. stop being a pussy about it and hiding from the literal sun lol. its true old and sick people need AC now

@NewLeftEViews I mean, the Europeans are saying "This is expensive and we can't afford it" so I believe in Europoor discourse. Not "Boy, this is going to suck, but I don't want to die so let's move some money around".

The 'Europe needs AC' debate is really confused and toxic. My two cents: of course air conditioning needs to be adopted en masse across Europe. But the debate needs to be on clear footing. (1) The 'Europoors' narrative is an idiotic form of projection by Americans who are used to having AC all year round. European climate is historically far milder than America AC is only becoming strictly necessary this century. You cannot help but notice how the loudest voices in this debate are also 'climate realists' and often big supporters of the epic US fossil fuel drive. (2) The biggest opposition is cultural. How many Italians have I met in baking heat refusing to use an AC because they're afraid of a 'colpo di aria'. But you can't pretend as though there aren't real stumbling blocks: the European grid is straining as we speak. I don't know how a few hundred million or so ACs would work as it is. (3) The energy costs are non-negligible and it is again absurd to compare to the US experience for obvious reasons. If only there were an air conditioning system that's also a key part of the decarbonisation / electrification strategy, i.e. heat pumps. The European heat pump strategy focuses too much on the heating side and overall is missing every realistic target while losing momentum. (4) The data need to be sound. This chart doesn't cut it. It's comparing apples to oranges on both sides. European cold deaths figure has an has attribution problem: it's not counting people who froze to death but how many extra people died on days that were colder than some chosen ideal temperature. The US heat death figure likely severely undercounts, the data are messy with high error bars (excess-mortality range is 3,000–20,000). Partly it's genuinely less heat-driven deaths due to AC adoption but the range is large because the data can't see it clearly.

@Abi0lvera @BlackIslePMD en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_di… sure they killed 6000 and exposed half a million people to toxic gas, but at least they helped a few dozen homosexuals!!!

I use Dow because the academic studies looking into corporate covert allyship had only a few companies reveal their name. International companies tend to be very prestigious and higher paid than local options. In many of these countries, formal employment, as opposed to informal employment, is a pretty big deal. When in North Africa, working at Starbucks puts you in the top 10% of the country (roughly). For context, there McDonald's is considered a really high end special treat. Maybe I'm missing something, I'm not really familiar with Dow specifically.

I was a US diplomat in Senegal and Egypt. In both countries, being gay is illegal. Our diplomatic social scenes were a bubble, a small piece of the West where a man could mention a date with another man without fear. One friend told me how much that meant to him. No one in his family knew. I think about friends in his position when people in DC roll their eyes at corporate Pride. Even if a lot of is marketing, some of those companies with floats are big employers in places where police hunt gay people on dating apps. Nearly 1,500 of the world's largest firms sign a pledge to bar discrimination against gay employees, in every country they operate, not just the friendly ones. When Singapore blocked foreign firms from funding Pride, Dow held its own version inside the office. Microsoft in India held a camera-off anonymous LGBTQ inclusion Skype call. Some companies host a Diversity 101 course that teaches the definition of bisexual and introduces human rights in China. Countries like Egypt want what these corporations bring: investment, jobs, and prestige. They can't fully shut out the values that come with them. The nondiscrimination policies we asked for here travel across borders.

@emergenteffects you also have to pray for a war to bail out your historically unpopular government

History offers some fascinating lessons. I’ve been looking into papers from the 1970s when Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition for some inspiration. What comes out is the remarkable fact that they spent the years from 1975-1979 vigorously preparing for government. So, what did they do? The foundational document here was Stepping Stones, a Centre for Policy Studies paper which outlined, in painstaking detail, what needed to be done to solve the issues of the day. It identified that Britain’s problems were not isolated — and could therefore not be solved by individual policies alone — but an interconnected series of issues which needed to be tackled systematically. The paper asked what needed to be confronted if anything else was to be possible. The answer at the time was union power. It is easy to forget just how powerful unions were in those days. They could bring the economy to a complete standstill. Therefore, the paper was careful to outline that winning an election, even on a landslide, would not be enough. The Conservatives would need to prepare the ground for this battle, both in the public sphere and in terms of the steps taken legislatively to fight it. It even argued that it was in their advantage to have a later election, to allow time for their arguments to seep into the public consciousness. Another fascinating document from the time is the 1977 Ridley Plan. This laid out what operational preparations were necessary to actually take on this monumental task. He stress-tested what would happen if the unions fought back. He categorised which unions would be the most difficult and the easiest to take on. By fighting an “easier” union, the government could derive consent to hobble the more powerful unions. Thatcher’s actual tenure demonstrated this sequence in action. In her first term she passed legislation (such as the Employment Act 1980) step by step, which slowly weakened the unions’ ability for sustained strike action. In 1981 her government tested confrontation with the miners, realised they were not ready, and backed down. But this was merely preparation for her future showdown. More legislation was passed which further weakened unions, and crucially police pay was massively increased. This set the stage. By 1984 the preparations had been made and she was able to take on and defeat the miners. The rest, as they say, is history. While ideally this would have occurred during her first Parliament, had the government attempted this they would have lost. The required shaping operations, both in the debate and legislative domains, had not yet been made. But the Thatcher ministry was highly adept at knowing when to pick a fight, why it was picking it, and how to win. We need a similar approach for 2029. It is not enough to win an election and hope this sees us through. Brexit showed us that a democratic mandate is only the beginning. We need, as much as is possible, a comprehensive diagnosis of the profiles and a battle plan to solve them. Every policy area ought to answer the key questions: What is the problem? What do we intend to do about it? What is the easiest way to achieve this? What steps need to be taken before we do anything? Who is going to oppose us? How do we defeat them? With this blueprint, any change is within reach. Without it, change will be impossible. Our fight is as big as the one Thatcher had with the unions. Fortunately, our enemies are less monolithic. But they are more numerous. We must ensure this is a fight we decisively win.

@t848m0 @anglofuturist now sure, you can certainly make a very good legal argument this is null and Parliament can legislate anyways, but this would require you to be willing to provoke hysteria and accusations of authoritarianism and impending dictatorship as you destroy the supreme court

@t848m0 @anglofuturist the supreme court has already veered incredibly close to saying that parliament can not legislate certain things. all you'd need for a consitution is to say "this can not be amended by regular legislation, if not the courts can strike it down"

Honestly, Burnham's going to be so overwhelmed by the situation he finds the country in, so he won't have time to do most of these things. The one I can see him doing is proportional representation. He does not have any mandate big enough to codify the constitution.

very good article on this. also interesting that spain has 70% car ownership rate, and 80% own their houses despite being the least suburbanized wealthy country worksinprogress.co/issue/why-spai…

@smi8546_smith @mattyglesias No, as the thread itself points out Spain is a big outlier here. The reason is more or less that Spain refused to build suburbs during the economic boom days for policy reasons

@mattyglesias I feel like the only acceptable answer to this is "because America is rich and spain is poor, so Americans want places to put the large cars that they drive to their large houses, so we have large parking lots. Spain has none of these things because it can't afford them."

The US and Spain are actually *both* outliers among advanced economies in terms of their level of suburbanization.

@arctotherium42 reminds me a lot of China

The post-Cardenas PNR were basically non-ideological problem-solvers, statists but not socialists, who prioritized industrial/capitalistic/technical/economic development and political stability over all else.

Thread with excerpts from the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) section of TR Fehrenbach's "Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico" (1995). Calles created the PNR in 1929 to institutionalize the govt and Revolution, creating a Mexican party-state.

the vibe

@GWBPatriot @arctotherium42 what on earth is that

@arctotherium42 Most syndicalists today unironically come from the hearts of iron 4 mod community

Syndicalism is one of those ideologies that still somehow has a (minor) support base, so it's worth pointing out that turning over industries to the unions failed miserably in Mexico.

@UrbanExplorer00 here's a look at the future buddy, the average NFL regular season game is $156.13 and it goes up 10% normally every year

@UrbanExplorer00 imao, you think this is going to be limited to international football??

This is a disaster for football. They'll pay more than a top European season ticket costs for one minor game. International football being accessible for normal people is over. There's no turning back given how the FIFA mafia operates.

it was unfortunately destinty the minute that stupid england preview came on about "its a new team" "we forgot about the past" "we won't make the same mistakes" they would immediately do that thing england famously does in every world cup since like 1974

@ChristofFurness @tomhwilliams23 it should've been uruguay alone, maybe a few matches in argentina but this was meant to be uruguay's tournament

@tomhwilliams23 It is all so Saudi Arabia can host 2034. The 100 years should have been Uruguay and Argentina and nowhere else with the opening game and Final in Montevideo. I am contemplating boycotting all of that edition

Sorry the 2030 World Cup will be hosted in Spain, Portugal, Morocco… But also has a game each in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay?! Logistics on that seem interesting 🤣

@Billie_T I enjoyed how the doctor said he was going to curse Harry Kane but only enough to make him not score but not curse him so much that Kane got an injury

Anyone got this blokes number, I have a plan for Thomas Frank

@chicosueco @stats_feed The King of England is the legitimate heir of the King's of Scotland, and the SNP policy is Scotland would remain a commonwealth monarchy

@boyfailbstrivin @stats_feed Don't they need a king first then?

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 If Scotland became independent, its two-letter country code could not be any of the following because they are already assigned: SC → Seychelles SO → Somalia ST → São Tomé and Príncipe SL → Sierra Leone SA → Saudi Arabia SN → Senegal SD → Sudan