Just came across her case now, when trying to find the article by the guy I mentioned (unable to, and had major difficulty a while ago, so suspect it has been scrubbed).

They like to suppress the existence of these laws too, and to shift them around - easing, tightening, easing, tightening, and changing, so neither activists nor whistleblowers nor journalists nor randomers who stumble across horrors can know how to keep themselves safe, or to have any ability to weigh up the level of risk they are taking on with any action, and so it is considerably harder to challenge the law let alone any conviction.

That journalist wasn’t an activist at all at the time or connected to activist circles. He’d been investigating reports about a worsening legislative climate, and had taken care to keep well within the confines of the (publicly known) law.

Remember that journalist who ended up in FlorenceADX in the 2000s without having had access to a lawyer, simply for reporting on the AgGag legislation and being found on a public road taking photographs of an empty feedlot?

He managed to get released, but he was straight up blackholed for a while, potentially indefinitely.

It is very possible, however housing near the better state schools is typically very expensive, so for many families it is considerably cheaper to shell out for private school instead.

Additionally, the high achieving state schools have selective entry, so even if you buy the expensive house within the catchment area, your child isn’t necessarily getting in even if they’re bright and studious.

What are the squirrel & beavers in this context?

Peculiar blend of uber-bland and brothel.

Now you’re living with someone who dreams of being a risky fart, the kitchen counter has won a war of attrition against your left hip bone, and you will never be free of the heady aroma of Lynx & gamer rinsed in a little stagnant water, and you cannot begin the day without a slug of cheap whiskey.

At Towerburn!

Just today a number of my searches had me wondering whether AI slop generators were generating articles and suitably titled websites in response to the searches I was making on my search engine.

I don’t know how they’d do that without being able to snatch search terms I make to my search engine (DDG, with its AI features disabled), just don’t find it plausible that anyone is bothering to generate hundreds of sites on extremely narrow aspects of obscure topics, even if semi-automated.

Then both of you are old enough to remember those creepy Monchhichi dolls which were everywhere, that these new dolls look like descendants of.

And they often have the same question worded slightly differently three or four times in the first paragraph.

Increasingly find that search engines ignore instructions to filter by date or site, which coupled with ignoring all operands will kill off their utility entirely.

Idk, politicians seem dirt cheap!

One wonders what, exactly, these fetid ghouls deployed to get their rancid snot-encrusted whinging acted upon.

AWS can fuck right off.

If the UK decides to put any funding toward AI, it must be publicly owned & run, with Amazon’s grubby, grasping paws barred from any access to it or to any part of our grid.

Yay, boobies & locks!!

Do you think the HRT could be making the feelings you describe in your first comment more intense? Female puberty is often a tumultuous time emotionally until the brain acclimatises, even as it brings great relief and many satisfying changes, and fluctuating levels at any time can have a similar effect.

Be gentle to yourself, and try to do things you find comforting.

The method by which the Crown assents to petitions is via signing bills which the elected government of the day and the House of Lords have voted to bring into law.

In theory, the Crown could refuse to do so, or attempt to bypass Parliament by issuing a royal decree. In practice they’d find such efforts ignored at best, more likely their constitutional role far further curtailed (thence leading to a rapid diminution of their ceremonial duties and privileges, if not outright abolition).

The situations under which the Crown could flex their power and have a reasonable chance of survival are extreme. Even here, they’d de facto be acting in tandem with the populace to defend against a coup and preserve (or restore) Parliament as the source of law within a representative democracy. Whether or not they’d do so in a very clear cut scenario is moot; in the dense fug of populism as a cover to usher in authoritarianism, absolutely not, let alone the drear realities of a clumsily formed electoral system chafing and fraying in a complex world. Against that, neglecting to intervene in defence of the realm from clear attack could also prove fatal to the Crown, albeit far less hazardous to the monarch themselves & their family, having greater opportunity to go into exile beforehand.

Either way, they’d have to be confident that a large majority of the Armed Services, Police and other key institutions, all members of which swear an oath of loyalty to the Crown, were up for obeying orders issued by the Crown against a hostile takeover of democratic institutions.

Whether as a temporary measure to defend the nation in an emergency, or any other cause including those which are malign, a monarch acting as a supreme leader would likely have to use a good deal of their personal wealth to fund their activities. In this they can quite easily outspend many actors.

Broadly, it may be more effective for the Crown or the monarch in their own right to discreetly support an array of resistance groups, than wield regnal power with overt grandeur in the face of grubby onslaught. Meantime… we all best be glad that is vanishingly unlikely that the current monarch or his heir would decide to avail of a severe crisis as an opportunity to seize absolute power.

To add to replies confirming he actually sounds this way, his sister seems to have a similar issue, albeit less marked.

From voice messages between them in the days after the felling, having something they did become a news item may have had some allure.

Though why they’d want that so badly, and why they’d opt for destroying an ancient sycamore & damaging part of Hadrian’s wall to obtain such attention is another matter.

Land wasn’t theirs, they didn’t live near it nor on land which people cross to visit the tree. They didn’t take the wood. Nothing has emerged to suggest they did it on behalf of someone else.

The pair went out on a stormy winter night, making a special trip to fell the tree, and leaving shortly after. Despite the darkness & lashing rain, one made a very grainy video recording of the other felling the tree with a chainsaw.

So far, they are pleading not guilty, so it’ll be interesting to see whether they raise a defence or merely introduce doubts about the reliability of the evidence brought against them.

Idk, I feel it could have been an induction ritual for some group they hope(d) to join, or flagging up their willingness to conduct sabotage operations for hire, but more likely an unfortunate dissociation from reality caused by viewing the world and their own lives through the distorting lens of social media.

Attending the hearing yesterday, one had his face & hair entirely concealed as he passed press photographers waiting outside, which doesn’t fit with a craving for fame. The only footage presented by the news of the other man was taken at a court appearance for an unrelated matter a few weeks ago - it isn’t clear whether he somehow escaped their attention yesterday, or simply hadn’t attended.

I’d rather live in the dark, haha!

Probably. Bright, wide-angle downlight dotted all over the damn ceiling create that uncanny valley look.

Struggling to think of any domestic application where they would not be an unreasonable choice - maybe a particularly small shower room where all of the walls where one might mount a wall light have some problem which means they cannot be used. Even then, ugh.