The current Labour leadership has an eternal debt of gratitude to the Israel-linked Jewish Groups that participated in the Anti-Semitism Slander Campaign to overthrow Corbyn which was so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was accused of anti-semitism when he compared some of the actions of Israel to those of the NAZIs, in order to slander Corbyn by association (he was in the same panel in the conference were that Holocaust Survivor said that).

I'm actually surprised they're doing this and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's structured to look good to the Press whilst not in fact doing anything meaningful ("some restrictions" that do "not suspend sales entirelly" has quite the stink of a certain very traditional structure in British Politics for a measure that produces certain headlines on the Press whilst not really doing what the headlines imply).

Judging by the actual toffs I've known sufficiently well, they get taught during their time in Public School as teenagers to separate presentation from their true thinking and desires, i.e. their true identities.

They'll do what they think they can spin as the right thing whilst being seen, but outside that, all bets are of (it really boils down to the kind of person behind the mask).

I think expecting to change their identities through forcing them to wear certain masks is like expecting that repainting the façades of a Potemkin Village will magically make the real buildings appear behind them.

The regular folk who aren't celebrities get minor honors, not knighthoods, and it gets covered to death in the Press how some fireman or nurse got "an honor" and yet they're never made "Sir" something of "Dame" something-else - the Press always spins it as a great thing and never mentions it's only the smallest of honors that they're getting.

If you go see the actual list of Knighthoods and Damehoods (and don't get me started on Lordships), it's mainly the moneyed, upper middle class - the kind of people who are in the BBC's Board, Theatre Directors, heads of banks, owners of large companies and so on - and people in senior positions in the State aparatus.

Call me weird, but I think somebody who risked live and limb to save children from a fire deserves a knighthood much more than somebody who is a CEO of a bank or owner of a supermarket chain.

Whilst I did not live in the US, I did live in 4 countries in Europe (having got involved in politics in 2 of them) and from what I've seen those GenXers who fought for a better World are not the majority, not even close.

As somebody in that cohort and hence having moved along with it over the years through school and work, the general impression I got over time is one of political apathy and consumerist self indulgence.

(Certainly I was generally the odd one out in having strong political beliefs and it's funny that even now in the political party I'm involved in, in my local area only a handful of active members are from my generation, whilst most are from the older generation and the second largest group are from the younger generation)

It really wasn't much of a fighting generation to begin with back at their teenage and young adult years (just compare it to the much more recent Climate movements of the young) and there was a lot of apathy towards the ones amongst them who were (the pinnacle in the US was maybe Occupy Wall Street, which was violently suppressed by Obama - the very same who did the shoving of trillions towards Finance in the first place - and notice how still today so many of my generation think he was a great President).

I agree with you on the outmanouvered point, though that was a lot easier to do because the will was there for a few, not for the many, so when the few got suppressed the many wouldn't lift a finger and often even agreed that those "making waves" should be stopped.

I did the same transition a couple of months ago (the Windows to Pop! OS one, not the desktop environment one) and even though I'm a gamer (something which has stopped me from moving to Linux on the main usage of my home desktop since the late 90s - were I've usually had it on dual boot but not used it that much) am very happy with it.

I've actually been familiar with Linux since way back in the Slackware times, but only now have I started using as my main desktop.

I do think it's getting to be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop for a lot more people than ever before thanks to the aligned forces of Windows "all your computerz belongz to us" 11, software as a system with general enshittification and just how much easier it is to game on Linux thanks mainly to Valve and the steady, unrelentless, stream of improvements being done by the Wine devs.

How much is Trump's Racism the real thing?!

I mean, he definitelly plays that tune to entice a certain type of person to support him, but I've always had the idea that he was an equal opportunity asshole, or if you will a "race" of one, a person for whom there no "us" just "me"

I think he's terrified of losing to somebody who is not from the same social circle as he is and might very well not got easy on him (like Biden did), quite independently of gender or race.

It's a lot harder to notice the additional incoherence due to aging on people who constantly say things uncorrelated with objective truth (what's - and I kid you not - scientifically called "bullshitting") - when they're young they'll say whatever independently of truthfulness because they're trying to manipulate others, whilst when they're older they'll say whatever independently of truthfulness because they're mentally lost - the output is similar but the reason is different, so it's harder to tell from the outside how much is their bullshit the product of an aged mind.

Surelly the additional gravitational force felt by Trump due to his outsided ego has accelerated his aging?!

"Slightly Risky Valley" just doesn't have the same bite.

As I said, celebrities (famous sports people, actors, comedians) get knighted, probably because giving such awards to people "beloved by the Public" makes the Honors System seem honorable, even though such recipients are a tiny proportion of the whole - this very much dovetails with my point about how putting image management above almost all else is a well entrenched cultural characteristic of the English upper classes: by very publicly giving knighthoods and damehoods to celebrities they're maximizing the projection of a "good image" for the Honors System whilst minimizing the number of members of the "lower" classes who get it.

You will notice that in every year's honors list there's only one or two knighthoods and damehoods for "celebrities" right next to a much larger number of people getting similar awards whose only "honor" is being upper class and/or faithful servants of the State (and by State I don't mean Society as a whole, I mean the centuries old power structures of Britain).

I would say your view of it reflects their great success in using the technique of honoring people "beloved by the Public" to shape the Public's perception of the Honors System as rewarding merit, all the while the hard numbers show such recipients are but a tiny fraction of the total.

Beyond that you'll also see upper middle class people who have been faithful servants of the Establishment get knighthoods (quite common in the Justice System and probably why Sir Keir Starmer got his knighthood), which makes sense as a form of incentivising such people to be faithfull servants of the British Establishment - people within the machinery of the State who express a want for change don't end up in the Honors List.

Working Class people who were actual heroes risking their own lives for other people only ever get minor honors.

As a member of Generation X, I would say that it's not going to be much better.

Just look at, say, Elon Musk as an example of the kind of people from my generation who get to positions of influence.

Most GenX are the product of the Neoliberal era, so have interiorized the whole "lookout for numero uno" idea of how to be in society and whilst commonly aware of things like Climate Change, they're usually unwilling to inconvenience themselves for the sake of fighting against it, quite the contrary even (just look at how well SUVs sell), and similarly when it comes to Consumerism, they seem to be the most prone to wasteful consumption (the kind of people who replace their mobile phones every year or two).

In summary, Gen X generally are more well informed than Boomers but even less principled than them.

Hah! Total failure!

The guy is still alive. Nice try Death Valley!

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Which would mean that from an Engineering point of view the option on the left would be perfectly feasible.

On the other hand it does make some sense to structure a combat vehicle as an onion with more mission critical sections inside were they are better protected and less important ones on the outside - you easilly have armour in between levels in that setup whilst in the setup on the left you would need to explicitly add rings of armor sectioning your corridors to achieve the same.

That said, in the Star Wars films we can see that the ship hangars with access to space have a "side" open to space and the "floor" side perpendicular to the radius line of the Death Star, which is consistent with the left side option and inconsistent with the right side one (where the opening to space would be on the top).

Laws without enforcement and steep penalties for non-compliance are just political image management.

"Sir Starmer"

Let's not forget his stamp of approval from the very establishment that refuses to account for the needs of anybody but the well off.

"we want to make clear our unreserved apology to X and we are making every effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again"

Is a standard bullshit response in Britain, which unvariably doesn't get any follow through.

See also "lessons have been learned".

It's clearly a backfitted excuse.

In my own personal experience, the English middle classes and above are mainly concerned with projecting the right impression rather than doing the right thing (and the higher the social class, the worse it gets) and the Power over there is almost entirelly in the hands of the upper classes (Britain has maybe the lowest Social Mobility of all of Europe).

So this looks a lot like a bunch of posh twats deciding to give her the award because it made them look good, clearly without actually thinking about what being disabled is all about, so the thing ended up blowing up in their faces (such people get the power they get because of were they come from and having frequented the right schools, not due to competence)

After a few years living there I learned to disregard who and what the Establishment over there celebrates as it was invariably either "each other" or something that somehow enhanced their own image if they celebrated it (the so called Honors System - which is how things like Knighthoods are given - is a great example: only the rich or top politicians get Lordships, Knighthoods and Damehoods are for upper middle class, rich and celebrities, firemen and nurses who went far above and beyond their duty and risked life and limb for others only ever get minor awards)

Dried chilli's are pretty easy to find in some parts of Europe, just not others.

I can tell you for sure they're a thing in Portugal.

The claim "they learned from their mistakes" does not follow from "they made mistakes" and hence is not supported by it - for example, it's quite common for people to make a mistake and then derive the wrong conclusion for why, hence not learning from it. You're literally ignoring the part I disputed in your original statement (that making mistakes does not always lead to learning from them) and instead addressing something I did not dispute at all (that learning is an improvement) - absolutely, learning is an improvement, shame that "learning from one's mistakes" is a stated desire on how things should be from Pop Culture (i.e. "you should learn from your mistakes"), rather than an observed and confirmed causal relation that's always true.

Again, shit that isn't Logic. You adding a claim of madness for my personality really just drives down the point on that.

As for the straw-man, selective picking of what somebody else wrote (with or without the inclusion of selective quoting) "enriched" by affirmations of your own that go beyond what the other person wrote and are not supported or even implied by it, is literally the most common way to build straw-men.