"finest silks and linens' washed in orphans tears and the blood of martyrs.

No thanks - I know where he's been.

'Masters of the Return' like dangerous politicians, toxic influencers, child-molesters, con artists, neighbours-from-hell, serial adulterers (to give a few examples) keep recycling the same old behaviours because behind what they do is a pathology, a closed loop with no exit ramp, a compulsion they rarely have enough insight to acknowledge or control. How do these parasites/predators keep finding victims to exploit? Because society constantly creates a supply of new victims to use. Behind every victim there is a matching pathology, usually going back to childhood abuse or neglect, that sets them up to be abused.

Thus in a society like Britain, we have a minority of sociopaths and psychopaths (1% or less), a large group of people with sub-optimal childhood experiences (some measures might say as many as 80% have poor childhoods and thus grew up to some degree vulnerable to be exploited in adult life), that leaves very few citizens who had a good enough start in life to not become either an abuser or a victim (maybe as few as 19% or one in five of us).

What is a shock to me is that the ideal of how we should be, is actually a minority experience. Few people are what we call 'normal'. Actually, 'normal' is the exception not the rule. Our politics has not kept pace with reality. We need politics to see itself as a branch of therapeutics - see it as necessary in order to heal society. Sadly, politics is one area of life which has very few 'normal' people in it - not even one in five MPs is psychologically healthy, more than 1% are sociopaths. People like that cannot fix politics any more than they can fix their own pathologies. Starmer and his Cabinet are same as Farage and Reform, in that they are not mentally healthy and not offering the kind of politics we actually need.

If I had to guess, I'd say this level of pathology is required by capitalism and will only end if we curtail capitalism to protect ourselves i.e. capitalism harms us in childhood, we grow up exploitable, and capitalism duly exploits us - ultimately it is profitable to hurt kids. To be able to exploit people capitalism requires a supply of sociopaths, so such people are not just tolerated under capitalism but promoted into powerful positions and weaponised to exploit the rest. The good news is that just by being normal, giving your kids and others close to you a healthy, well-nurtured, psychologically normal life - being just normal humans, good mams and dads, happy kids - is actually radical politics and helps the push back against tyranny. I reckon this is one deep reason why capitalists hate stuff that promotes good human relations e.g. woke stuff, gender politics, trans rights, stuff that heals and empowers 'ordinary people' who would otherwise have just been victims. A happy child will not grow up to be anyone's doormat. That's the hidden revolution going on right now.

Like they sold average of 12,000 vehicles a day in Canada (some number like that, Tesla allegedly fraudulently claimed they sold loads of EV in order to claim subsidies from Canadian government worth $millions)?

'squatting movement' sounds like some kind of weaponised shitting. Knowing the Dutch, I think they'd be amused by that idea.

XDA forum was that for me. Great place to start and then follow links or do more research using the keywords used in the discussions. Just helpful for things like learning if a kernel is potentially fixable or not before buying a second-hand device for a custom rom project. The new look / reorganisation of stuff annoys me though as I find it harder to find stuff than it used to be but that's because I am using it on autopilot. I guess new users might find it attractive / easy to navigate?

Beware the Ides of March, huh?

If I recall, Shakespeare's Caesar says to Antony:

*Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*

Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it's just a coincidence.

Interesting... Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea ... and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).

That occurred to me too - I am old and can recall how we used to communicate and we were much more likely to give people time and hear them out than now. I am British and we now typically speak faster than we used to, youngest generation gobbles so fast I find what they say incomprehensible except for the expletives, and our accents have changed - standardised around Americanised, Londonised, British generic. There used to be strong regional accents, even separate dialects that had survived for centuries, but now these have effectively gone extinct and if I use a dialect word no one under fifty knows what it means. I find that rather sad. As for writing, this too is abbreviated and simplified e.g. using emojis instead of trying to describe complex emotions. I see this as a top-down change driven by technology and monetisation of social lives - it promotes brief attention spans, rapid turn-over of thought/feeling, quickly onto next topic, see another ad, move on, repeat, no leisure to reflect or second-guess or share a process with others. I find it debases public culture, encourages divisions and intolerance, and promotes political extremism (mainly of the Right since the Far-Right approves instinctive action over rational choices - 'move fast, break stuff' as does predatory capitalism - 'don't think, just buy!'). Everything is 'hot takes', empty slogans, and algorithm-led scripted reactivity.

I am not surprised that there is a global loss of literacy and language comprehension skills - in China, reliance on mobile technology means using predictive speech-to-text (Chinese language cannot be written effectively with keyboards) or voice control with the result that even university-educated Chinese now struggle to read or write less common words e.g. 'brassicas' rather than 'cabbages'. Take away phones and/or censor the use of this technology e.g. ban some vocabulary so it cannot be communicated in writing, spoken to others via technology, or be used to control technology, and Chinese citizens will soon be unable to communicate or think independently.

To avoid dystopian futures, I think we will have to take responsibility to reclaim these skills and/or resist the change by being 'old fashioned' especially when using new technology like AI or when online. Like I am now - writing a lot instead of a few hot words and expecting others to donate time and bother to read me. This kind of communication is either reactionary or revolutionary now, radical Right or radical Left. This kind of English is the luddite sabotage of the C21st. I want to use this kind of slow language to promote Leftist politics. Bring back the verbose! Bring back slow time! Save humanity! I guess I am in a minority on this but I always have been all my life so I shrug and continue. In practical terms, I ration my exposure to fast language and spend a lot of time reading paper books or listening to archive audio from C20th where the language is slower and at a pace that supports meaningful conversation (even if it is just imagined dialogue between the reader or listener and the author or speakers). Thank you for reading this far (if you did).

Israel ranked 8th in 2025, if I recall correctly. 8th happiest country on earth, higher than my country (UK) or USA. Mind you, in 2024 they were 5th happiest so its not all sunshine and roses for the IDF. For comparison, I could not find rankings for Palestine or Hamas.

Makes me wonder exactly what they were measuring as 'happiness', how they measure it, and who they asked!?! They certainly did not ask Israelis opposed to genocide and doing their best to put Netanyahu in gaol - I have Israeli friends like this and they are off the chart miserable right now.

I guess MAGA cultists of all ages, Nazis, Christo-fascists, first-time Gen Z male voters enthralled by the triumph of the Trump, that Alpha Male so adored by the not gay but straight very straight get that right straight as straight as Vance he's married and she's not his beard manly Manosphere influncers like that guy whose name I forgot but was accused of rape in Romania, or the Gen Z Betas 100% in bed with the incels (so to speak), plus Tesla customers, and OpenAI employees, plus anyone who shot his balls off to own the libs, are all enjoying peak happiness right now - actually their Venn diagram is just one big happy circle. So cheer up, USA, its not bleak for everyone! /s.

Seriously, this happiness ranking is clickbait bullshit, don't let it spoil your day.

Exactly! There are some dark, dark story lines in Skyrim. We all talk about the obvious nasties like orphanage matron Grelod the Kind with her child-size torture chamber in Riften or farmer Lemkil in Rorikstead who relentlessly mistreats his twin girls. But there are even worse NPCs out there. And Hod is a monster...

Huge numbers of people eligible to vote, do not vote. I think the hope behind these calls for new parties is that the shy voters would like a change and would vote for a radical alternative in enough numbers to elect the Left into government. I am less convinced that shy voters are just waiting to give their votes to a better party. I think many have given up on representative democracy. The way all democracy, but especially USA democracy, has been privatised means you would still have to get massive funding to run a campaign just for the new party to be noticed by the media, let alone win votes from people not motivated to even bother to register to vote before. Thus your new party has to pander to donors more than its members or potential voters and the old, old story repeats on a loop where the party is just a puppet to wealthy puppet-masters. Old Dems are dead, welcome the New Dems, same as the old Dems.

Thinking things over, I am pretty old, nearly 70, I have recently decided that political parties and representative democracy are not able to deliver good government. Maybe last century they did, sometimes, but there's no way to go back in time. I now believe in direct democracy and some kind of anarchy - my model is life in a small community, everyone knows and trusts each other, agrees the rules on how to run their lives, the focus is on just living each day and being as happy as possible. This society meets human need, in humane ways. We humans need that kind of nurturing. Modern nation states are too big, too complex, admin is too 'one size must fit all' impersonal not to be inefficient and tyranical. Better to live in smaller communities and have more autonomy. Manage larger problems through a wider network of those who share your values, a federation of new city states maybe. Can it be done? Only way to know is to try it.

The Far-Right have smashed the old reality. Their ideas about new cities-states imagine them as kingdoms with absolute monarchs, elites admin, and slaves with no rights, only allowed to live if they generate profits. It is up to each of us to use this cursed opportunity to make a new future different from the dystopia imagined by Curtis Yarvin and his ilk. We have to dare to be free. As things get worse, it will not be a choice but a necessity. Be your own rescuer or be another's slave. Political parties have almost never been our friend, no matter what they say just to get our votes. More of the same is just slow death.