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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2024

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  • I use drills everyday for work and have one at home that doesn’t get used much because if I want to get handy I don’t want to drive to work to get one.

    The average person has fuck-all experience with power tools, they don’t use them every day. They can pull the trigger and it goes brrrrrrr but they don’t know what the options on the rotation piece are, they don’t know about different types of chuck, they don’t know which gear setting to put their drill in. They use it for the absolute minimum amount of time possible and then put it away. You’re clearly a professional if you’re using them every day, most people are not.

    I don’t know whether the 7 minute claim is true or not, but the idea that most drills barely get used and spend most of their time sitting about is not very difficult to believe. I’m quite a handy person, and even my drill spends most of it’s time doing nothing because I’m not drilling every single day, just as and when DIY jobs come up.

    In a world drowning in ewaste, and lithium being a precious resource, why are we collectively wasting so much on individual drills when, as JubilantJaguar said, we could own these things communally and not create so much waste.

    The idea of a communal toolshed for your street, block, tenement, whatever, isn’t the same as having tools sitting at work. Work for most people is a commute away. Communal toolsheds would be local. They ideally shouldn’t be any more than 10 mins walk away. Can you really begrudge a 10 minute walk for the sake of your wallet, environment, and community?

    This also helps the young get into DIY easier. Most of my mates growing up barely did any DIY or tinkering, not because they weren’t interested, but because the cost of getting the necessary tools was prohibitive as a teenager. It’s taken me years to accumulate the toolbox I have now, and many of the items in there are hand-me-downs or second-hand. A communally owned toolshed gives everyone instant access to tools regardless of personal wealth or resources. If a power tool dies, £150 spread between multiple households is nothing compared to £150 for an individual household.

    Managing it, caring for the tools, ensuring they’re returned, and in a good state, are obviously hurdles to be addressed, but if communal toolsheds were the cultural norm then they could easily be overcome. We manage to do it with books easily enough, why not anything else?


  • In Scotland? I don’t think so. In the world, ever? Certainly, there’s examples from America, which means it’s not impossible to become a thing here at some point.

    My worry is more about the point of barring certain people from being able to hold office rather than the specifics of why they’re being barred.

    If somebody is on the sex offenders list, in a proportionally representative democracy, with a healthy fourth estate, I would hope that would be requirement enough to prevent them from becoming an MSP. If they still managed to get elected, I would hope it’s because they managed to prove their reason for being on the list was spurious. It erodes trust in fair and free elections the bigger the list becomes of who can not set the rules.

    I know it’s a slippery slope argument, but after years of reading other countries’ news, it feels a legitimate worry to have. Governments come and go, just because we have a good one now doesn’t mean we will in the future. Laws like this could be abused to prevent “undesirables” from holding office.


  • Simpson said: “This is not a cosy club, this is a Parliament, this is not a second-rate chamber to be used as a part-time hobby, this is a serious Parliament, and members should be fully focused on their work here.

    Along with the ban on double-jobbing, the Bill also makes provisions that will allow foreign nationals with limited leave to remain to run for office while barring sex offenders from holding office, along with those who have been convicted of a crime which includes hostility towards politicians or electoral staff.

    Sounds a bit like a cosy club if you can just bar people at will, regardless of whether the public wishes someone to be their MSP or not.

    This is the kind of law that sounds reasonable until you hear cases of people being put on the sex offenders register for having a piss near a playground at 3am on their way home from the pub. Or in the future, if we have a hostile parliament to the people and there’s a backlash, anyone who stood up could potentially be barred based on their activism.

    Scotland is a pretty well run and reasonable country when it comes to laws and courts but that doesn’t mean there isn’t and won’t be abuses of the law now or in the future and laws like this can be abused to ensure only the “right people” get to decide our laws.

    I also notice the article focuses heavily on Stephen Flynn with no mention of Douglas Ross at all, wtf?





  • No. His lineage traces back to Elrond’s brother. Elrond and his brother (whose name I’ve forgotten) were both half elf and half human, with the ability to essentially choose which side to embrace. Elrond chose to be an elf, his brother chose human.

    He then founded the kingdom of Numenor, which was an island nation off the west coast of Middle Earth. It eventually (a few hundred years later) got destroyed by the sea/God and the surviving Numenorians set up the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle Earth.

    That was many, many years before Aragorn. So there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of elf in there, which is why Numenorians live a bit longer than normal humans and are usually taller, but it’s not enough to say he’s Elven.







  • A top Romanian court has annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, days after declassified intelligence alleged Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round.

    The constitutional court’s decision – which is final – came on Friday after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence two days earlier that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram.

    Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on 24 November. He was due to face the reformist Elena Lasconi, of the Save Romania Union party, in a runoff on Sunday.

    More details soon …

    • Associated Press, via The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/06/romanian-court-annuls-first-round-of-presidential-election


  • Like Felix said, most EU countries have burgundy passports. The UK had burgundy passports while still in the EU.

    Parts of the UK right wing press and politics stirred up drama about the colour of UK passports during the Brexit debate bemoaning that the dirty, unelected, bureaucratic EU had forced the beautiful, strong, innocent UK to switch from our nationally loved blue passports to their disgusting red ones when we joined the EU.

    What really happened is the EU agreed (with UK input) on a standardised layout and design for passports. They did this to make movement around the EU easier and simpler. These agreed standards were guidelines. Each EU member was free to ignore them if they wished. Most use the standard because it makes their life easier. The UK chose to follow the standard, partially because it was one of the designers of the standard.

    Because there was a standard colour (burgundy), this meant there was a higher demand for this colour. Higher demand means passport manufacturers prioritise their production for these demands. Prioritised manufacturing meant this colour and style became cheaper. It’s not bespoke, it’s the standard.

    Because the Conservatives and Reform, etc. (the Brexiters) made such a big deal about the colour of UK passports, when Brexit happened they of course had to follow through on changing the passport colours. The result is that UK passports cost more to manufacture now than they did before, and last I checked were manufactured by a company in France! But the Brexiteers believe they’ve won against the EU by having blue instead of red passports.

    It’s so embarrassing.





  • The easiest way to survive Kristal Nacht 2: Electric Boogaloo is to get outta there before it happens. Stockpiling some food and “hunkering down” isn’t gonna keep you safe. Get outta there.

    What does America offer that you can’t get in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc?

    Brain drain the fascist state to a standstill.

    The earlier you do it, the higher your chances of being accepted into other countries. They may block American refugees if there becomes an exodus. It also means you have time to sell unnecessary items instead of possibly having to abandon them.

    Good luck, whatever path you choose.


  • We don’t fight back, though.

    We trade with China.

    We trade with Israel.

    Until there was a full-scale invasion we traded with Russia despite 2014 - 2022.

    Where there’s money to be made, ethics and morals are ignored. Just because we’re moderately better than them with regards to rights doesn’t mean we’re good. We’re just not as bad.

    We are aligned with America, creating another giant power block. Another country that’s a cunt to people.

    Human rights abuses are being documented all over Europe from Italian farms to UK detention and deportation of refugees.

    The state of the world is depressing and appears to be on a downhill trajectory. There’s so many parallels to the rise of the Nazi party going on in multiple countries and so many people are oblivious to it. In their echo chambers of consumerism and “I’ve got mine”.

    I think I’ve had enough Internet for the day