

I was adding an edit to that part of my comment to clarify as you were submitting yours. I agree that it doesn’t even look like they’re seeking to injure anyone.
Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.
Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.
Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.
Really hoping he hasn’t brought the jinx with him.
Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish
I was adding an edit to that part of my comment to clarify as you were submitting yours. I agree that it doesn’t even look like they’re seeking to injure anyone.
You’re right. I wasn’t clear. It doesn’t look like they’re going out of their way to cause grievous injury though.
So you can now be a terrorist without blowing anyone up or otherwise killing anyone. Merely inconveniencing and injuring (Edit 2: through carelessness rather than malice, by the look of it) is sufficient.
Therefore the UK government, in that act where they took away benefits, inconveniencing and causing indirect injury to many, is by this definition a terrorist organisation. (And likewise the government before them.)
Edit: Forgot the obvious point: Clearly, since the IDF like blowing up and killing people and are not classified as terrorists, that either means that such actions are not terrorist actions any more and only the milder actions now qualify, or they are the worst kind of terrorists and should be labelled as such.
Edit 3: Source stating there may have been injuries associated with the group’s actions: https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619
Has Putin started being paranoid about his food and drinks yet?
In principle, I’m all for that. In practice, I’m on a shoestring budget and when serviceable toilet paper can be had for half the price of a bamboo roll, I have to take the cheaper option.
I like to use the plastic wrappers that toilet rolls are sold in for waste bin liners. I don’t know about other places, or even manufacturers, but the ones I buy come in a wrapper that doesn’t have any holes except the one I tear to get at the rolls in the first place. All I need to do is widen that a bit once the rolls have run out and it’s ready for any bin or bucket I might be using.
I’m also using an old shredder bin as a waste bin because the shredder part died. Decided I might as well hang on to the lower part. Perfectly usable receptacle.
It’s rubbish, but that only makes it more apt!
(The following is from my, possibly faulty, personal observation. Take it as you will.)
Clowns are at least 80% mime. If you can convey a message - often a funny one - with only exaggerated actions and facial expressions, I’d say you’re well on your way to clowning. They almost never talk and there’s a definite shared white face-paint thing going on.
The main talkers seem to be the ones that do kids’ birthday parties or ones in “senior” positions in a troupe where it would be funny to imitate a bossy person. They might otherwise allow a shout or mock cry of pain, but rarely use words when they do.
The other 20% is brightly coloured, ill-fitting (usually oversized) clothing, a bigger emphasis on slapstick, and props that make noise.
I’ve seen mimes perform cheap magic tricks, so that’s not exclusive to clowns, but I’d say that was more of a clown thing as well.
There’s a whole continuum from mimes to clowns to magicians and back again now that I think about it. Teller of Penn and Teller fits somewhere around the “back again” part. And Harpo Marx was basically a clown without the face-paint.
If, as rumours suggest, the DPRK is in the habit of punishing the families of defectors, I can only hope he was an unattached man with no family.
At the very least, I’m sure someone in charge of the border patrol at the north side is going to get a stern talking to.
As to those family punishment rumours, I can imagine the DPRK might like people to believe them, even if they’re not true. It would go some way to discourage people from doing things like this.
Well, once you’ve had your country invaded by rabid psychopaths, there’s bound to be some gene admixture (to put that far too mildly) and so you’ve a chance that their descendents, even if it’s recessive and rare, will have the desire go on to do the same.
Of course, rabid psychopathy and the urge to invade other places can also come about on its own, but when you look at the way the Vikings and their Germanic cousins invaded western Europe a thousand years or so ago, and then note what happened a few hundred years later, it has to make you wonder whether it might have only happened the once.
It could be owned by an entity called Sutton Snax. That probably isn’t what they’re going for, but it could be read that way.
Now, x-apostrophe might be (more?) correct in that instance but it’s far more forgivable than any interpretation as a plural.
You’d definitely find dry little black rice-grain-like droppings on all surfaces if you had mice, especially in rooms that have food, and more will appear if you clean them away. Also, little sticky splotches that are easy to mistake for drink spillages, because they pee everywhere too.
I managed to get rid of mine, but I occasionally still find evidence they were here in out of the way corners that I forgot about.
Brave mice - because I’m sure some will have that trait - and those infected with toxoplasmosis won’t care about cats.
Good luck.
I’m one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I’m on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.
The reason I’m in the state I’m in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.
I’m one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I’m on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.
The reason I’m in the state I’m in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.
How about cultivating a world that is less depressing before jamming wires into people’s skulls to “fix” a problem that might not originate there?
Oh no, that won’t do, the people who have low tolerance for depressing reality have to be turned into drones for the corporate machine just like everyone else. If we can turn off the emotions that derive from a sense of self-preservation, they’ll be more willing workers for the constant grind.
In before employers require that their applicants must have one of these implants. People without will not be hired.
By the 24th century we won’t be Star Trek’s Federation, we’ll be an unholy hybrid of the Ferengi and the Borg.
I reckon I’ve been pretty lucky. The handful I’ve attended haven’t been that bad.
The “worst” one, at least from my perspective, was probably a relative’s where I was an usher and messed up something with the church seating. The guests sorted that one out themselves when they thought I wasn’t looking. The wedding itself went without further problems, but that minor mess-up on my part will always stick with me.
The next “worst” was the one where the reception / after-party had a DJ who cranked the music volume another notch every 10 minutes. The venue had a literal decibel meter on the wall, and I think he had made it his goal to max that sucker out. I’ve been in clubs where the music is so loud you can’t hear your own voice when you’re talking (shouting) to someone else and this went well beyond that.
By contrast, the ceremony itself had been very demure and pleasant, in an English country manor house no less, and were it not for that DJ, it might have qualified as the best.
The best one was probably when I was a kid. I don’t have any memories of the church ceremony, which has to mean I was bored out of my mind, but must have behaved myself and there were no problems of any sort. I vaguely remember the reception in a function room at a hotel and there was nothing of note there that I remember either, except exploring the hotel. Weather was good. Must have been perfect.
“Mum” is a shortening of “mummy” (or similar) which almost certainly came before “mother” (or its ancestor words) as a word for one’s primary female caregiver if not also birth giver, on account of it being baby-talk that ancient parents naturally took to be a name bestowed by the child.
In languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, the -t(h)er suffix is a familial grammatical particle that has long since ceased being productive, and remains frozen in all daughter languages. Speaking of which, the -ter of “daughter” is the same particle.
That “mum”, at least phonetically, is also an abbreviation of “ma’am” is a coincidence caused by dropping so many sounds from the original “ma dame” that it reverts to, well, mumbling, which isn’t far off baby talk, all things considered.
FWIW, there are places in the world where “Mam” is a name given to mothers by their children, which is also rooted in baby-talk and also has no connection to the other pronunciation of “ma’am”.
Nowhere. If this was a video game I would have quit playing a long time ago.
To her face, “Mum”, but when referring to her indirectly it’s usually, “my mother”.
I remember asking if it was OK to stop calling her “Mummy” but I’m not sure how old I was at the time. Definitely under 10 though. Probably heard other kids of the same age calling their mothers “Mum” when they were being collected from school and figured I’d better act accordingly and do the same.
(The only people who use “Mom” here are folks in the West Midlands, I think. And American ex-pats, I guess, but that doesn’t really count.)
Racial / cultural supremacists wouldn’t want to kill anyone of their preferred (usually their own) group, and certainly not a significant number of them. They’d basically have to gerrymander the water supply to arrange things so that only those they want to be poisoned actually get poisoned.
That’s 1) expensive and 2) someone’s going to notice.
It would be far easier, and cheaper to go full genocide and start shooting.
In one case, active in the world right now, the “undesirables” live in one area, and rather than poison the water, the supremacists have simply cut it off. They’ve also implemented the “start shooting” strategy.
I wish them all a crippling attack of conscience, and if not that, the inability to distinguish who they want to shoot from who they don’t want to shoot.
https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619
This article states that injuries are alleged to have resulted from the group’s actions. I should have added this to my original comment in the first place, but better late than never.