Automation that replaces the need for work can be a good thing, but only if it is used to ease the overall burden instead of making a bunch of people unemployed so that the capitalists who own the company can increase their profits. The idea of machines doing all the work sounds great, but if that means that the handful of people who own the machines have a great quality of life and everyone else suffers then that is not a good trade-off.

Most people don’t vote

About 70% of the electorate vote nowadays, it has varied higher or lower but never been as low as 50% of eligible voters to even say “half of eligible people don’t vote” let alone “most”

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8060/CBP-8060.pdf

So assuming you have say 20 old people on your fictional bus, even assuming that all of your voter info is correct and everyone is on the register, the chances of all of them being able to cast a second vote without any of them being caught are billions to one.

The idea that millions of people will risk a significant chance of a lengthy prison sentence for their individually tiny extra votes is absurd when any actual attack on election integrity would not happen at the point of “turning up at the polling station and hoping for the best.”

Even if one in a million voters did try and get away with this - which again is a hugely inflated number from anything we get an indication of - if to do so you stop tens of thousands of people from being able to vote at all that still makes the election less democratic overall.

Why would you need a passport if you aren’t leaving the country?

It’s a piece of paper you buy every ten years if you want to travel across national borders, it’s not like some intrinsic part of your being.

At the point that the new voter ID legislation was introduced, about 8% of the electorate - ~3.5m people - did not have a passport or a driving licence.

Some states do use their own definitions of terrorism to explain why it’s bad when other people do it but OK when they do it, but that’s definitely not a uniform definition.

the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.

- Britannica

The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.

- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants.

- Wiki

(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal

- Collins English Dictionary

the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes… government or resistance to government by means of terror.

- Webster’s

HDK is the record label, that’s just a playlist someone made of a few other releases from that label.

As far as I know it’s bandcamp only. You can listen to it free on there though, although it does normally ask if you want to buy the album after you’ve listened a couple of times.

While stuff like Tomb Raider is the quintessential example, for a five year old you would probably be better with something more colourful and fun, even if you are the one playing it.

With that in mind my first thought was A Hat in Time although I’ve not played it through to verify end to end appropriateness.

You could also try Mirror’s Edge because bright colours and dynamic movement, I don’t remember it being that violent but maybe on second thoughts consider the safety aspect of introducing a child to the concept of jumping between buildings and maybe I’m talking myself out of this.

Celeste is colourful and fun and honestly at that age I don’t know that she would pick up that much on the heavier aspects of the story which are allegories for anxiety/depression/gender dysphoria. A five year old is basically going to see it as a story with an evil twin I think.

I haven’t played Child of Light but that might be appropriate?

The main character in Crypt of the Necrodancer is a girl called Cadence, although that is one you would really have to enjoy to make it worth it imo. I’m mostly thinking rhythm and bright colours are child friendly again to be honest, but you still have to play what is basically a roguelike mixed with a rhythm game and if that’s not your jam it will be a waste of money.

You can always play a game with selectable skins too, like Spelunky 2 has a few characters you could pick between which all play the same but has a variety of designs you can play as.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cegalOZqmEo

I don’t normally plan my reading much ahead of time but August is an exception on a few counts.

Firstly, Whalefall by Daniel Kraus comes out on August 8th. It’s such a goofy idea for a story (think Jonah and the Whale meets The Martian) and I have been so pumped, I’ve been talking people’s ear off about it for months. It’s like scientifically accurate Pinocchio.

Secondly, one of the bookclub picks for the Discord server affiliated with !bookclub@lemmy.world is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin

And then it’s Tropeical Readathon (a semiannual reading challenge thing) again so I have a couple dozen books picked out to cover that, but the only other sci-fi one apart from the above is Under This Forgetful Sky by Lauren Yero.

I made a kind of “if you like PHM you might like these other books” rec chart thing when I first read PHM; if you’ve finished reading it you might enjoy some of these (although it does mention a few key elements of the book so if you’re going in completely blind and aren’t far in yet then don’t look at this yet).

This mindset is why a lot of Blairite Labour policy is “be slightly less right wing than the Tories; the policies might suck but as long as everyone left of Thatcher and Farage feels we’re the lesser evil we don’t need to actually try and be good.” Not having anyone representing the left on the national stage is just going to result in more rightwards drift. I’ve commented elsewhere in this thread on not wanting to split the vote too much between dozens of tiny splinter parties, but also voting for Labour in their current state builds complacency about the voters they think they’ve banked because they used to stand for something, and just leads them to chase more of the Tory vote.

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The strongest centre left candidates at the moment are the Greens. As far as electoralism goes, it would be better to stand behind a party that actually has a membership than split further into parties which frankly look the same as countless other “like the left flank of Labour but better” parties.

At least something like the Northern Independence Party could raise the priority of the North. I’m not sure what this offers that, say, the Breakthrough Party doesn’t apart from further vote splitting.

Feels like it will offer a similar level of political success and distinction as when you are trying to look up CPB vs CPB-ML vs CPGB-ML vs NCP vs RCPB-ML vs… except with everyone having platitudinal tech marketing guru’s branding like Transform, Change, Breakthrough etc.

Reading & Writing

• !bookclub@lemmy.world

Video Games

• !retrogaming@lemmy.world
• !gamedeals@lemmy.world

Comics

• !comicbooks@lemmy.world

Board Games / Table top games

• !magictcg@lemmy.world

The Professor Elemental Justice League looking one is funny and the Elijah Nang is hella comfy looking, but my favourite here is the Scartoon cover. The art style looked familiar but I don’t know David Mancini (https://www.instagram.com/dart_works/) it just has that slightly like Michael DeForge style energy.

Here are a few more, although I only know the Larry June one as a record

It’s a machine learning chat bot, not a calculator, and especially not “AI.”

Its primary focus is trying to look like something a human might say. It isn’t trying to actually learn maths at all. This is like complaining that your satnav has no grasp of the cinematic impact of Alfred Hitchcock.

It doesn’t need to understand the question, or give an accurate answer, it just needs to say a sentence that sounds like a human might say it.

The impacts of the environmental damage are not necessarily worse than the environmental damage from not sinking superyachts in the long term, if it becomes a common enough threat that rich people no longer feel secure in owning them.

The concern with anything too destructive is with the property and safety of workers on board imo, not the ships themselves.

I’d recommend Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline if you want to hear more about the reasoning for this sort of thing.

You cannot do that with other social media.

Facebook likes, Twitter likes, Discord reacts, LinkedIn reacts, etc. are all publicly visible. The only possible slight difference with this is that in some cases people might not be aware, in which case the issue would be that it is less obvious to a casual browser than Facebook’s “AncientMariner and 23 others liked this post” rather than that the likes are visible at all.

Guru Larry’s Fact Hunt videos can be fun, although he definitely uses an over-the-top personality. He often does listicle style videos but almost always forgets that any video game has been released since 1993. Lots of lists will contain like amiga ports of arcade games and stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/@Larry

For example in the video “Purposely Broken, Unbeatable Games by DICKISH Developers” the game selection is Smash TV, Gladiator/Great Gurianos for the ZX Spectrum, Robocop for the Commodore 64, Dennis the Menace for the Commodore Amiga, and then Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 but it mentions how weird it is to mention something so modern

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mn-4y8YrU4

I’d definitely agree with the people recommending Robert Rankin.

Tom Sharpe is also funny (Wilt, Porterhouse Blue, etc.)

Also (disclaimer that it’s by someone I used to know which may affect my judgement) Go Up by Simon Broadbent is clearly influenced by the Terry Pratchett books set in Ankh Morpork.

I didn’t like it quite as much, and it is more middle grade, but A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking feels kind of Pratchett influenced.