“Unveiling the largest left-of-Labour electoral challenge in history, Mr Galloway, who returned to the Commons in the Rochdale by-election in February, said the party was speaking to three Labour MPs about their possible defection.”...
Yawn. He's a pro-Brexit, anti-net-zero, conspiracy-theory-peddling demagogue. He literally endorsed and then tried to get selected as a candidate for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in 2019.
Why are people who claim to be on the left even giving Galloway the time of day?
Two men have been charged with cutting down the popular 150-year-old Sycamore Gap tree next to Hadrian’s Wall last year in northern England, prosecutors said Tuesday....
I don’t consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It’s a futuristic space fantasy.
Is that an unpopular opinion? Most sci-fi/fantasy fans I know would probably agree with this. I love Star Wars, but in the same way I love Lord of the Rings.
Also, Star Trek Enterprise is one of the best Trek series, IMO. Top 5.
I would say the final season of Enterprise is arguably the best single season of any Star Trek show so far. But it was a long road getting there...
The human crew (particularly Archer and Trip) were difficult to warm to in seasons 1 and 2 - I found them so much more emotional and overdramatic than an intelligent professional human would be today, and that it made it difficult for me to accept them as the bridge from today to the 23rd/24th century Starfleet we know.
Season 3 was tough for different reasons - maybe it played differently in America, but watching from outside the US a lot of it felt like post-9/11 revenge fantasy. Very proto-'America First'.
They have duty shifts, each will have an officer in command. In a three-shift system (i.e. where each shift lasts 8 hours), you might have the captain commanding the day shift, the first officer the second shift, and another more junior officer on the night shift. Other times (like when Jellico commanded the Enterprise) there can be a four-shift system. If something important happens when the captain is off duty or asleep then the shift commander can always wake the captain - but the vast majority of the time (i.e. all the days in between episodes, which we never see) then nothing eventful happens during the night shift.
On the Enterprise D, Data often commanded the night shift since he didn't need any sleep, but in principle any officer (even at Lt Junior Grade or Ensign) could be put in command.
I ended reading up a load on this for a Star Trek Adventures game.
I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go....
I've found it useful for TTRPGs too. Art generators are certainly helpful for character portraits, I also find ChatGPT can be useful for lots of other things. I've had pretty mediocre results trying to get it to generate a whole adventure but if you give it tight enough parameters then it can flesh out content for you - ranging from NPC name ideas, to ideas for custom magic items, to whole sections of dialogue.
You can give it a plot hook you have in mind and ask it to generate ideas for a three-act structure and encounter summary to go with it (helpful when brainstorming the party's next adventure), or you can give it an overview of an encounter you have in mind and ask it to flesh out the encounter - GPT4 is reasonably good at a lot of this, I just wouldn't ask it to go the whole way from start to finish in adventure design as it starts to introduce inconsistencies.
You also need to be ready to take what it gives you as a starting point for editing rather than a finished product. For example, if I ask it to come up with scene descriptions in D&D then it has a disproportionate tendency to come up with things that are 'bioluminescent' - little tells like that which show it's AI generated.
Overall - you can use it as a tool for a busy DM that can free you up to focus on the more important aspects of designing your adventure. But you need to remember it's just a tool, don't think you can outsource the whole thing to it and remember it's only as helpful as how you try to use it.
Neoliberalism is about having faith in the incredible power of competitive markets, which have transformed human society and progress in the last couple of centuries. But not all markets are competitive - and private actors will always have private incentives to impede competition and create monopolies, and occasionally will encounter the opportunity to act on those private incentives.
Neoliberalism isn't libertarianism. I think neoliberals generally favour state intervention when that's targeted at correcting market failures where private and public incentives otherwise become misaligned (for example, introducing carbon taxes).
Aren't non-compete clauses inherently about stifling competition? My instinct is that this is just about promoting competition and the power of the market to do its thing.
This was an interesting angle to the growth of private equity that I hadn't thought about before:
Stocks also still tend to be the cornerstone of portfolios for less sophisticated retail investors. Alexander Ljungqvist, Lars Persson and Joacim Tag, three economists, suggest that the disappearance of markets may reduce public support for business-friendly government policies, as voters benefit less from corporate profits.
London’s police force has been forced to issue two apologies after officers threatened to arrest an “openly Jewish” man if he refused to leave the area around a pro-Palestinian march because his presence risked provoking the demonstrators....
I think he was pretty clearly there with the intent of his presence being antagonistic. He's not just a random Jewish man who coincidentally happened to be walking through the area at that particular time, he's a pro-Israeli activist who was hoping his presence would provoke a reaction as part of an attempt by political partisans to paint mainstream pro-Palestinian protestors as racist.
But - regardless of his intent - if the only reason the Met could point to for them believing his presence might have actually been antagonistic is his ethnicity and his religion, then on the surface he hasn't done anything wrong.
I think this episode should be read in the context of a wide-ranging assault on free speech and the right to protest by the current Conservative government, which is encouraging a pattern of overreach by the Met police in response to legitimate protest.
I think a lot about our birthrights as EU citizens that the Brexiters stole from every Briton. But there's also something really tragic when you think about the sliding doors personal stories that result from Brexit and the theft of our freedom of movement.
I know many people today who met their partners before Brexit, as a result of freedom of movement. I know children who wouldn't have been born if Britain hadn't been in the EU. If you project that forward from 2016: there would be children alive today who were never conceived and never born, because their parents never met, because of Brexit.
How would this even work? NATO is a treaty for collective defence against an attack on a member's territory 'in Europe or North America'. Argentina isn't in Europe or North America, so presumably wouldn't get the Article 5 protection that is the cornerstone of collective defence - unless the treaty was amended to also cover members' territory in South America?
(Sidenote: to the best of my knowledge, since NATO was established only one country has attacked the territory of a NATO member in South America... 🤔)
Boris Johnson turned away from polling station after forgetting to bring photo ID (www.theguardian.com)
Former PM made the requirement to bring photo ID a stipulation of the Elections Act in 2022
Galloway's Workers Party to stand candidates everywhere in challenge to Labour (morningstaronline.co.uk)
“Unveiling the largest left-of-Labour electoral challenge in history, Mr Galloway, who returned to the Commons in the Rochdale by-election in February, said the party was speaking to three Labour MPs about their possible defection.”...
2 men are charged with cutting down famous 150-year-old tree near Hadrian's Wall in England (apnews.com)
Two men have been charged with cutting down the popular 150-year-old Sycamore Gap tree next to Hadrian’s Wall last year in northern England, prosecutors said Tuesday....
What's your Sci-Fi unpopular opinion? Part II
It's a slightly click-baity title, but as we're still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?...
Galaxy class delta shift sucks. (lemmy.world)
Tory plot to take sword to Sunak and make Mordaunt PM (www.independent.co.uk)
Conservatives condemn Kristi Noem for ‘twisted’ admission of killing dog (www.theguardian.com)
Revelation in new book that possible Trump running mate killed ‘untrainable’ hunting dog prompts widespread revulsion
Science Fiction's best franchise of course! (i.imgflip.com)
What do you personally use AI for?
I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go....
FTC Ban on Noncompetes Is a Victory for the US Economy (www.bloomberg.com)
By giving workers more bargaining power, the new rule will make businesses more competitive.
Why the stockmarket is disappearing (www.economist.com)
Large companies such as ByteDance, OpenAI and Stripe are staying private
Two UK water companies lack complete maps of sewage networks (www.ft.com)
Can you guess which ones?
Modi Calls Muslims ‘Infiltrators’ Who Would Take India’s Wealth (www.nytimes.com)
archive.ph/Qewyx
London police apologize after threatening to arrest ‘openly Jewish’ man near pro-Palestinian protest (www.nbcnews.com)
London’s police force has been forced to issue two apologies after officers threatened to arrest an “openly Jewish” man if he refused to leave the area around a pro-Palestinian march because his presence risked provoking the demonstrators....
Republicans erupt into open warfare over Ukraine aid package vote (www.theguardian.com)
As the speaker of the House finally allows a vote to go forward on aid, the GOP’s internecine warfare is tearing apart the party
Sunak rejects offer of mobility scheme for young people between EU and UK (www.theguardian.com)
Labour has also rejected European Commission’s proposal which would have allowed young people to live, work or study in the bloc
Argentina bombshell as Milei submits request to join NATO (www.express.co.uk)
President Milei has formally put in an application to join the global military alliance.