anonemouse

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• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
  Republic of Ireland: 3 year war of independence a century ago, a full democracy* today (cf the USA, a flawed democracy) ...skipping blithely over that whole Civil War bit. Soldiers tying tortured prisoners to land mines, anyone? If you grant...
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
  Because what we want is police having millions of hours of bodycam footage to feed to machine-learning algorithms trained to recognise "criminality" (defined however the designer/owner/law enforcement system defines it)....
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
  Name another country where "the revolution" hasn't degenerated into tyranny within less than a generation. Erm - Great Britain actually, culminating in 1688-89. Oops. Yes, because that revolution's tyranny was established in the country it was actually fought in. (The...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  *gestures at the entire ignored first half that mentions Haiti* Is this some sort of 'fnord' situation where you can't even see the word?...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  The important thing to remember is that we were the first to get rid of it - something that seems to have been lost in the noise. It's amazing how many people forget Haiti exists. I wonder why*? *No I...
• Commented on Cough Cough
  The victim is plainly showing an ID card to the police - who knock him down & leave him bleeding from the ear - never a good sign. Even during the Miner's Strike, I don't think it would have got...
• Commented on Cough Cough
  I will quote Wikipedia on the Irish Greens: "It has served in the Irish government once, from 2007 to 2011 as junior partner in a coalition with Fianna Fáil. The party suffered a wipeout in the February 2011 election, losing...
• Commented on Cough Cough
  Yes Greg, we're well aware colonialism is a go-to solution for when Britain has a population it finds awkward....
• Commented on Cough Cough
  Moz @416: Evidence please. I was referring to the extensive technology transfer (to use the polite term) program undertaken by the PRC government in cooperation with their industries, a program also executed by, among others, France and Israel. I am...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  "Ambulatory acacia" is a hell of an evolutionary niche. :-)...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Yes, Fine Gael and Fine Fail still exist a century after Irish independence -- having outlived their original objective of Irish independence handily Which is likely more "horrible warning" than "source of hope" to the SNP - they were two...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Or you could read one of the many, many articles explicitly explaining the reasoning - consistent since the ban came in in 1997 - for it, instead of getting all conspiratorial. (TL;DR: different conceptions about food hygiene and animal treatment,...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  we know how much profit e.g.Tesco makes (or doesn’t make, as the case may be) in a given year, but we don’t know (because Tesco aren’t required to report it) how that breaks down across their stores across the UK...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Also at least suggested - Mars One was going to fund itself by making a reality TV series of astronaut selection that would continue through the colony's founding. Is there a genre of "watching competence hit hard limits" reality tv?...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Also: it's been at least attempted - Michael Moore's TV Nation had a "CEO Challenge" segment. (The only one to rise to the challenge was the then-CEO of Ford, who changed the oil in an Explorer.)...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  I'll get back to it, but it's thrown a *lot* of "huhs?" at me in the first few pages. It does that. It's very in media res - it just throws you into the Captain's head, and it'd be weird...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  Now maybe for some foreign (to me) flag carriers that operate at a loss can fly with lower load factors. Or maybe regional airlines (22 in the US alone) operating planes in the 50-seat range might have something to do...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  I'm going to quibble - because apparently that's mostly what I'm here to do these days - with this: Homeowners and fast food restaurants may have to do without power to keep the crops growing. In a famine situation, governments...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  You're suggesting we grow everything we want to eat like the Dutch grow tomatoes (lowest yield globally for 2018 was 2.5 kilos per square metre. The Netherlands' was 50.7). Getting there took a lot of investment, and tomatoes are a...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  That's interesting, is this SOP for the military or a consequence of the typically unarmed British police ("when the guys with guns arrive anyone is warned enough")? Possibly, though in the specific case Northern Ireland has never seen an unarmed...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  It's worth reading Plunkitt Of Tammany Hall to see what (some) politicians' opinion of the introduction of what civil service they have was at the time....
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  Your assumption is understandable... and wrong. "We have concluded that the explanation for such firing by Support Company soldiers after they had gone into the Bogside was in most cases probably the mistaken belief among them that republican paramilitaries were...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  My grandfather was a British soldier in Ireland during the Troubles. Volunteer, not conscript, so I presume what you would call a professional soldier. His section came under fire from a sniper. Sergeant down, and the Tommies panicking because they...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  it also calls a distractingly excessive amount of attention to the scenery instead of the action. Which might, after all, be the point. I'm thinking of Graydon Saunder's Commonweal books, which use singular "they." You think it's a case of...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  Given the hypothesis that liberal democracy is immune to legitimation crises is severely damaged by contact with things like "the opinions of the average taxi driver" ("they're all the bloody same, those politicians") or "an episode of Yes Minister," I...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  does the tarot work? Define "work," having regard of the generally accepted meaning of "the tarot works." (Less short and snarky: the tarot - among other things - may or may not be useful ways to start prying at metacognition...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  In my experience Ireland's topped out at four, three times - though there's no actual limit bar sanity. - Council, European Parliament, President, constitutional amendment referendum -Council, European Parliament, Dáil by-election, constitutional amendment referendum - Council, European Parliament, two constitutional...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  My suggestion from that time was to tell anyone from HK that they were welcome to live in one part of Britain ... NI Would have given the various christian murdering thugs loose then some pause. Would have done ......
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  Ok, but what are "Harga" and "Dibbler"? https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sham_Harga https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  There are very few politicians whose primary goal is to make flyover state voters happy. (Almost all of them are elected by flyover state voters.) That coming to the attention of US foreign policy is the same category of event...