theinspectorst @ theinspectorst @kbin.social

Liberal, Briton, FBPE. Co-mod of [m/neoliberal](http://kbin.social/m/neolib

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2 yr. ago

It's Mariner's sarcastic salute!

https://youtu.be/VnqLFjZD9pg

It's not either/or.

The UK benefits system is not generous enough. But most shoplifting is drug-related, it's not Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread for his starving niece.

The poor and their children suffer in Britain, but they do so while staying within the rules.

It doesn't. It increases when the market price increases, it decreases when the market price falls.

The point of the price cap isn't to be some sort of subsidy of consumer energy costs - though the government did some separate stuff along those lines with the energy price guarantee (which capped the typical household's energy bill at £2,500 for the period it was relevant) or the support scheme in winter 2022 when the taxpayer paid everyone £400. The price cap is now below the energy price guarantee so the subsidies are no longer relevant.

The price cap is just a way of giving people who chose to be on variable tariffs a little bit of predictability of what they'll be paying for energy three months ahead when the market prices are moving around.

“This may be the first time the UK has topped a European league table for the right reasons,” said Rob Percival, the head of food policy at the Soil Association.

The movie wasn't that well-liked and wasn't the perfect send-off for the original crew of Star Trek.

What a weird thing to say. I've always heard it described as one of the best TOS films and I always found the ending quite an emotional and fitting send-off to the TOS crew.

Miles O'Brien in the Kelvin-verse.

Live long and prosper 🖖

Live long and PARTAY! 🤘

I like worldbuilding too and I've probably got a lot more than 50 pages of background on my world (it's spread over a wiki so I don't know how many pages it actually comes to). But is that really what you actually give to players at the start? I feel like not many players would have the patience to work through 50 pages of homework before they're allowed to start playing (but congratulations if you've found a group who are that into your worldbuilding!)

A lot of my worldbuilding exists either for long-term campaign options, for peppering into dialogue or events to make the world feel a bit more three-dimensional, or realistically just for my own private fun that will never see the light of day.

For my homebrew world, I wrote a two page document covering:

• Geography: the rough layout of their starting city (the main districts and well-known landmarks), the main species that can be seen around the city (they're not limited to playing these, but I think it's helpful if you're going to play a dragonborn to know whether you're an outsider in this city or not), and a high-level sentence each on the handful of main locations that can be easily travelled to from the city - i.e. the stuff that any resident should know.
• Magic and religion: the pantheon of major gods and their domains, and a line noting there are other religious/magical traditions but most residents of the city would be unfamiliar with them.
• Politics: how the city is governed, who the noble houses are, and what reputation is widely known about each of them (not all of these are deserved...)
• History: some very high-level history of the city and world (at the level that an average resident would know - the equivalent of the name of this world's Roman Empire who founded the city, and what happened to them).

I figured that two pages is short enough for anyone to read and get some sense of the world I'm dropping them in, without going into so much detail that it takes away their ability to explore the world (which is dramatically bigger than the city).

There's also no real cost to people not remembering what's in the two-pager - people can get away with assuming it's a fairly generic fantasy world at first and I can easily resupply key info while DMing - but I figure most players like to know a bit about the game world before they start.

A better analogy would be that if you had thrust your head so far up Putin's arse that you could taste the pirozhki, then you too would probably find your mouth constantly full of his shit.

Orban is scum.

Businesses buy out other businesses across borders all the time. This is normal behaviour.

As for whether it's a good idea: in short, competitive markets tend to be a lot more efficient than protected markets - which ultimately leads to lower prices for consumers. Nippon Steel thinks it can operate US Steel more efficiently than the current owners and managers of US Steel, hence Nippon Steel thinking it is profitable for them to buy it at a price that is higher than what the current owners value it at (as reflected in US Steel's share price).

The fact that more efficient companies can buy out less efficient companies is an important part of what keeps market-based economies successful and dynamic. If you want to know what it looks like when economies don't allow this, take a look at the economic malaise in somewhere like Britain in the 1970s after several decades of protectionism and state support for failing industries (or if you take protectionism to a logical extreme, North Korea...)

There's potentially a line of argument about monopoly risk (monopolies are economically inefficient) but that seems limited here - US Steel is only the 24th largest steel producer and the combination of Nippon and US Steel will still be smaller than the biggest players in the steel market like Baowu and ArcelorMittal.

No, I get that, and that might explain if the US changed its policy on the two-state solution. But it hasn't - Biden has spoken publicly on two-state being the only viable outcome even within the last few weeks.

The two-state solution is - and has long been - UK official policy under governments of all three parties. So it's unsurprising the UK would vote in favour.

The weird thing is that this is also US policy. Why the hell would the US vote against this?

Addressing the Middle East, the Assembly took up the report “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources” (document A/78/467), adopting the eponymous resolution by a recorded vote of 158 in favour to 6 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 13 abstentions.

Why would the US vote against this? The two-state solution is US government policy!

'Boy, have you lost your mind honour, cause I'll help you find it!'

Literally in the legal definition in the Terrorism Act:

(2) Action falls within this subsection if it:

• involves serious violence against a person
• involves serious damage to property
• endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action
• creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public
• is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system

Also, poor people in London don't generally own cars. Driving is not an efficient way to get around London and it's a luxury.

This is a tax on those better-off Londoners who do drive, and who drive older polluting cars - or who live outside London but drive their older polluting cars into London - to protect air quality for poor Londoners who don't drive but do suffer from the consequences of cars.

Also there's a massive scrappage scheme so that minority of poor Londoners who do drive - and who happen to old a petrol car that's almost old enough to vote - can get thousands of pounds of government money towards a new one.

So you're talking bullshit.

New Nokia, who dis?

Mate, even if it was the mayor of Upton Snodsbury in Worcestershire who had made this comment, I would be glad to see the Auschwitz Museum had responded to them. The fact it was a mayor in the country in question makes it even more relevant.

Never again means never again. It means challenging genocide and ethnic cleansing every time, at every step along the road that leads to these outcomes - not just waiting until the trains are already on their way to the death camps before your raise your voice.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Spock died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again in the third movie according to the scriptures:

And that he was seen of Jim, then of the rest of the bridge crew.

- 1 Roddenberry 15:3-5