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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I’ve only heard of Mary Seacole out of the black Britons from history we’re expected to know of.

    I actually googled the musician and he has a relatively interesting story but it’s also not at all surprising people don’t know who he is today - he had one piece which was very popular called the Feast of Hiawatha which according to Google was played regularly until 1939 and then doesn’t seem to have been revived. Seems he was much better regarded as a conductor.

    Anyhow, historically this country’s establishment has made it hard for black people to get famous until the 20th century, something that this academic surely knows. She’s either naive or deliberately skewing her results for headlines by asking for names from a time when her top rankings include a Roman Governor!






  • No, I just think he’s very bad at reining in an extremely impulsive and volatile personality which leads to him making rash decisions. Also he is always wanting to make sweeping changes rather than gradual ones which may have worked with Tesla and Space but doesn’t suit Twitter.

    And lastly, I don’t think he really cares that much either way - as others have said, he had to be forced to buy Twitter remember. He’s got this albatross around his neck which is losing him money every day. He probably resents it a bit, has probably nearly hit the truth that the only way you could make a social media company profitable is to make everyone pay - except for the fact that almost everyone then leaves.

    I think he’s too much of a wild card for anyone to involve in their cunning plan. I mean regardless of politics would you recruit him for your masterplan?


  • I’ve been using a VPN, blockers, all sorts in the UK to disguise some of my online activity from Google and other companies so if I’m just doing the same thing to avoid the government there’s not much difference.

    The fact that I still use Google products is a lapse and due to laziness on my part…

    Of course it could be a vote winner for Starmer at the next election to say he’ll repeal it on free speech grounds of he played it right. But then the opposition could spin it as him not wanting to protect children online so he probably won’t have the guts to risk it.



  • VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let’s see, Wikipedia…

    I’m interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she’s much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.

    The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it’s very rare you’ll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it’s so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.




  • Someone else mentioned Procession to Calvary - an adventure game set in a cut and paste world of renaissance art with a very surreal plot and sense of humour. Pythonesque.

    There Is No Game is pretty hilarious, the voice acting always makes me crack up.

    Agatha Knife is a funny point and click adventure game where you’re a 7 year old girl who’s a butcher and needs to set up her own religion sacrificing pigs in the basement for… Reasons.


  • I remember definitely that Firefox was the browser of choice in our house pre-Google. IE was always nasty to use and my Dad was always a tinkerer and worked with IT guys a lot so we had Firefox on PC for ages

    (As a side note those same well meaning IT guys persuaded my Dad Linux was really easy to set up and use as a home PC for the whole family. Didn’t end well)

    Anyway, Firefox was trumping IE hands down as a family PC browser, I suppose I’m talking late 90s early naughts? Don’t know exactly. But we would have been using Ask Jeeves still as our search engine before Google search launched and that made my Dad’s eyes light up, because it was fast. And it was the same with Chrome when it came out. By then I’d moved out but like you say, they had the PR as the guys who were now changing things most.

    And it wasn’t all bs, because it was and in many ways is a very good browser. On the one hand there’s definitely an element of people using what everyone else does but also, if it was a total crock of shit no one would use it. For me it’s not even so much privacy but my tolerance for ads and need for a dark mode on mobile have got me back to Firefox on Android for now







  • I left Twitter back in 2016 when I realised I wasn’t using it anymore and it had come up in a you’ve been pwnd result. Figured I’d just delete the account instead of resetting the password and didn’t miss it.

    But I signed up to Mastodon today, because why not? I don’t really see why it’s being called hard to use. There’s some nice apps as well, which is making me more excited for a Kbin app when I wasn’t so bothered before…