New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
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@cstross @SoftwareTheron we could also do a lot of things a lot cheaper if we actually assigned the costs properly. Excess air travel would be self correcting if it had to cover the full costs for example.
@Colman This is the conclusion I have also reached. TLDR: all mineral extraction should be taxed at a rate sufficient to cover the costs (best estimate) of fixing the environmental damage caused by how it is processed and used.
(...and the revenue generated thereby should be used to, you know, fix said damage -- or reuse/recycle materials as much as possible to minimize it. e.g. pay people to repair and upgrade electronics, rather than grinding them up and sending the results to the poor side of town, locally or globally. Pay people to repair clothes and furniture. Pay for recycling plastics that aren't "cost-effective" to recycle. Pay for research into better ways to recycle things. Dump billions or trillions into mass transit, because it's so much more efficient than cars. ...and so on)
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@jsl @trademark @cstross What you're missing about "the left" in the USA is that (1) for the most part, they don't exist, still victim of the purges of the 1950s; and (2) the only reason we (a pronoun I use loosely) seem disunified is that the strategy of the Official Opposition
️ is to throw out test balloons of which vulnerable people to discard this week, then when opposition to *that* is led disproportionately by folks most directly impacted, then scream "you're tearing us apart." -
@cstross @jsl As I said, if it turns out to be true THIS TIME, it will be a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Assuming what you're saying is true, I would guess that Labour's leadership must have seen what happened to the most left-leaning US president ever and decided to overcompensate in the other direction. In the current situation I would recommend you spend 95% of effort on warning about reform and the remaining time on whatever labour is doing.
@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
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@HighlandLawyer @cstross
And poison the soil?@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
It's their ideas which are toxic, not their flesh. But if you really want, put them all in a rocket & fire them into a lunar impact with enough velocity to create a crater visible by eye from the Earth, as a warning to future generations. -
New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116108349700425602
> The class war has turned hot. And we're all on the losing side.
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross
But.You cannot give up on self interest without consequences, no matter how much you dislike self interest looking like helping other people...
In fact, I'd argue it's *very quickly* unsustainable if you're left to your own devices.
I just hope it's quick enough.
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Gates is personally, actively evil on a scale seldom seen. He's responsible of millions of deaths during the pandemic, and the sequestering of lots of pharmaceutical advances that used to be freely discussed between research laboratories.
Willing to kill every poor person aligns perfectly with his history.
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@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
@jsl @trademark Labour has drifted sharply to the right ever since John Smith (leader before Blair) died suddenly in 1994. The last even remotely non-right-wing leader was Jeremy Corbyn, who was hounded out of the party in 2019 by the ratfuckers who backed Starmer.
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@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.
@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?
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@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?
@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.
It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.
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@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
I'd prefer to compost them, better for the environment.@MedeaVanamonde @cstross @HighlandLawyer too many toxins getting into the food supply.
Dissolve them in piranha solution, and use the liquor as chemical feedstock. -
@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.
It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.
@cstross @trademark The media's bias is indeed something I had to learn is true
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross Wow what?! This is the first time I've seen that quote.
I mean the charitable read is "how do we end poverty" but even then that is a HELL of a way to phrase that if so?! And it's hard to give these people the benefit of the doubt rn
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@cstross Wow what?! This is the first time I've seen that quote.
I mean the charitable read is "how do we end poverty" but even then that is a HELL of a way to phrase that if so?! And it's hard to give these people the benefit of the doubt rn
@cstross I mean the entire thing of the Epstein files is wanting to think "it can't actually be that, this must be a misrepresentation" and then it's ACTUALLY that and WORSE than what you'd first think so I mean, I guess we should read it in the worst face value way
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
It's the entire attitude of the ultra rich class that they did this all by themselves with so little effort and obviously nobody else is worth a damn and why can't they be smart and rich like us?
They don't even realize they're simply grifting off the rest of us.
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
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@cstross @SoftwareTheron we could also do a lot of things a lot cheaper if we actually assigned the costs properly. Excess air travel would be self correcting if it had to cover the full costs for example.
@Colman @cstross @SoftwareTheron
per Ministry for the Future that problem self corrects when the small planes start falling out of the sky
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@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.
It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.
@cstross I@jsl@hachyderm.io Leftist policies in general are very popular, if the left would just stop the self-harm, they would win easily. Media bias can only do so much, it is not all powerful. Jeremy Corbyn in particular was a much too easy target, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine
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@cstross
It is the intersection of the degrees of selfishness & foresightedness. If your level of selfishness is "the good of all mankind" you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accomodation, etc; if "me and my family" you get traditional aristocratic behaviour; if "me & nobody else" you treat everyone else as objects, which can be disposed of at your whim- mass disposal of the poor on a par with a neat close-cropped lawn.and treating people as objects is sin per Pratchett
