Sampson

I get the feeling that Streeting got seen a bit too much as a snake by Labour mps in the end though, that it felt like he was being too backstabby. A bit like Gove did after May went in the Tories when he was favourite to take over when there was a lot of speculation May would go, but when May finally did go Gove kind of took too much of a reputation hit of scheming behind her back and therefore was seen as playing the politics too much by both the mps and the public. We'll see though, I get tge feeling Burnham is much more popular both within his own party and much more of a household name to voters than Streeting so will get to 81 mps, but I may be wrong.

It'll be interesting to see how much Restore eat into Reform's votes for sure.

I actually thought that was the case a few weeks back. After last month's local elections all the talk was how Reform had won big in that area that it'd be very tough for him to win there, but the fact its so quiet and Reform haven't spent thr past week in the media bigging up their policy abd criticising Burnham makes me think they all think Burnham has probably got it sewn up.

The by-election talk is extremely quiet considering this is essentially a vote for if Burnham becomes the next pm. I thought it would be the most talked about by-election in many years.

I also thought it'd be a fun short fantasy book and it's not, but that's also kind of the point(?) I can imagine some people dislike it because they go in thinking it'll just be a fun, short fantasy story and get a bit disappointed, but others like myself will really love its uniqueness for the same reason. I can't really say any more though, It's one of those books that's really hard to discuss without spoiling anything haha.

Yeah, I just saw this, feels like Russia really starting to test the boundaries to the rest of Europe the past few weeks. Getting a bit scary.

Piranesi was excellent. Not at all what I expected but really great, atmospheric and unique feeling book. Starting Red Rising 6 now.

This is definitely a good thing and a move in the right direction for me. I'm definitely noticing the pendulum starting to swing on the social Internet the past year or two. Know 2 people who've got rid of their smart phones and gone back to "dumb phones" the past year or two and a few more who said they want to do the same next time their 2 year planned programmed breakdown of their smartphone inevitably happens. Also just anecdotally I'm definitely noticing a growing number of people going back to reading physical books on lunch breaks in cafes, on buses or trains etc. because people are sick of feeling like their lives are controlled by their phones. My understanding is Waterstones are doing really well the past couple of years because people are wanting analogue books as alternatives to doomscrolling social media again. I'd love to see this go further and outright bans of things like infinite scrolling, recommendation algorithms and autoplay of the next video/episode but I think things are starting to feel like they're heading in the right direction. Personally think the need to upload ID is an extra step that many including probably myself won't bother with and thar barrier and non ease of access isn't necessarily a bad thing as it'll stop me and many others using them, although I definitely share concerns about data hacking and privacy. As for it being illiberal. 5-10 years ago I would've agreed, but don't really anymore because algorithms which are specially designed to hack an individual person's brain chemistry take the choice out of the matter and feel far more illiberal themselves - and these will only get more powerful and more specific to the individual person with AI development. It's the most sophisticated and addictive technology humans have ever come up with, even over gambling, and there's no country on earth that allows for "choice" over the really hardest and most addictive of drugs and medicines afaik which hack human chemistry for that same reason.

As much as I think most of the country dislikes those 14 years of Tory rule 2010-24 with regards to them not functioning to build houses, I will be fair to them and say I don't think they didn't try. Apart from that small weird Americanised Libertarian faction of that era of the Tories led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and his "it's not tye state's job to build houses" line, I do think those Tory governments came in and often promised and tried to build houses, but hit a brick wall of locals shutting down so many building plans. I don't want to use the term NIMBYism and this certainly wasn't a left-right thing as rural Tories on the right and Green environmentalists on the left and LibDem B&B owners in Cornwall in the centre were all much a part of opposing house building in their areas - but its been very difficult to build housing in the UK for decades because it's so hard not to get planning permission tied down by (often understandly) annoyed locals. I think a big part of it despite wanting to keep their locations "as is" is thatthe promise of Thatcherism was often built so much about home ownership - you buy a house and it's your nest egg - it'll be worth 6 times the price in a generations time and you can retire on it - but thatmeans people naturally don't want more houses built around them as this naturally decreases house prices due to increased supply and so (understandbly) oppose it because they've built their dreams abd retirement on the fact their house is now worth a certain amount and they don't want to see prices in their area crash down. It's a bit of a vicious cycle in a way.

Finished Red Rising 5. Really enjoyed most of it especially the Ephraim stuff with the Obsidians. Find some of the battles go on way too long though, I know some people like that kind of thing, but my brain drifts out when I'm reading about person x dodging y with z equipment for chapters on end. That 150 page battle at the start of the book felt like doing homework not reading for enjoyment. Need a break of a shorter standalone book or two before I do book 6 so I got Piranesi by Susanne Clarke out the library to read next

When Americans say "the western hemisphere" I think they generally mean the Americas and the Carribbean, what we in Europe used to call "the new world".

It's the 21st century equivalent of the nuclear Arms race between the US and China in the 1950s and 60s. Just hope we in Europe decouple from it all.

Just watching a YouTube video with people in it. Checked the comments and googled and found it was AI. I wouldn't have guessed, honestly it's a bit chilling that the technology is too good to tell apart from real life now. I just don't see how the legal system, administrstion/beaurocratic systems etc. will be able to cope with it really. What's stopping someone just manufacturing evidence to frame people or manufacturing alibis with this stuff, or politicians manufacturing reasons to discredit their opponents, push through legislation or reasons to go to war?

This culture wars thing is why I find the Reform thing so weird. I think there's understandable reasons why people dislike the rapid cultural change, we can discuss it and about the causes be they immigration, technology, capitalism or whatever but that feels like a pretty basic evolutionary human emotion, but I think personally that started with the Americanisation and de-Europeanisation of the British economy, industry, political system and culture starting from when Thatcher got into power in 1979 and turned Britain into America's lapdog with an America-style tycoon economic system. And I think Farage clearly represents such a radical cultural change himself and this weird Americanisation and de-Europianisation of our culture and politics. Reform and Farage just feel so Americanised and un-British to me. All this stuff about the flag, strong man leaders whon"say it like it is" and demanding we say the Lords prayer in council meetings and this weird stuff about "Judeo-Christian values" is so Americanised to me. The traditionalist symbol of Britain has always been the monarchy, we always used to say the Americans had that weird reverence to the flag and presidents because they didn't have a monarchy as a patriotic symbol. And since when has any British person born after about 1940 cared about this Jesus stuff? I remember how when the Simpsons was one of the big symbols of Americanisation in the 90s it being a topic of discussion how weird it was for Brits to see "the average family" they were supposed to represent still going to church every Sunday in the 1990s.

My favourite was the 2nd book - that was a really great book, a proper page turner from beginning to end with a fantastic ending. (I know book 6 is supposed to be a favourite of many too though). The 1st book I really enjoyed the opening and final quarters but found the middling quarters a little hard to follow at times. I could never fully get my head round Pierce Brown's writing style in the first book of the short, sort of poetic, staccato sentences - I understand that it makes it nicer to read in your head and gets across the feeling, but I found it wasn't descriptive enough at times for me and I lost track of what was happening. He kind of abandoned that writing style after the first book. Plus I prefer the full galaxy space opera of books 2 onwards that the Martian battle royale style scenario of the first (although I know he said, the only way he could ever get the book published was to promise to do it that way due to the popularity of Hunger Games at the time). I think I would probably appreciate the 1st book more on a re-read now I know the characters, basic plot etc.

Finished Red Rising book 3 and Dungeon Crawler Carl book 8 in the past couple of weeks, both fantastic! The endings of both books really didn't go the way I expected. Currently on Red Rising book 4 about halfway through.

I've said all along Labour will lose far more voters than they gain with this anti-immigration stuff. They are chasing a demographic who hasn't voted them for 20 years with this anti-immigration stuff and is pissing off the demographics that actually have voted for them in the past decade in doing this. Farage will always change the goalpost on this - first it was 5 figure net migration, then net zero migration, then net negative migration and then it will be re-migration. The net migration figures probably will be quite small by 2029, but Farage will have moved the goalposts to being remigration by then, meanwhile Labour will have pissed off all the university educated, pro-EU, liberal gen z and millenial voters who the anti-immigration stuff doesn't play with and who were the voters who actually voted them in.

Not to mention their housing is an endless cycle of 6-month rental contracts in shared houses with strangers with shared kitchens and shared bathrooms which still take 50% of your monthly wage and then you lose a further £500 deposit every 6 months when they have to leave the house share to find a new one because of pedantic landlords finding a tiny scratch on a skirting board - which is actually what make it impossible to save, along with student loan increases on earning increases making career progression of possible not even pay. That is how most university-educated under 40s I know live, I have no idea where all these foreign holidays come from either.. What Raj describes sounds like a young 20 or 30-something adult in 2006 - pre the 2008 financial crisis - not a young 20 or 30-something adult in 2026 and sounds incredibly out of touch.

Yes, plus AI technology which humans don’t understand how it works and the ageing population - huge issues humanity has never faced before in its existence . And I still think a lot of issues and mental health problems ultimately come down to the internet creating a society which is much less social when human brains are evolutionary wired to crave social situations they way we are evolutionary wired to crave food, because that’s what helped us survive, working with and caring for other humans around us. I too fear more of the world the children today will grow up in, and what it will look like in the 2050s or 2060s

Wordle 1 786 6/6 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections Puzzle #1064 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟦🟪🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 Just about got there

Wordle 1 785 3/6 ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩⬜🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

But you can’t even do that anymore because technology and AI affects every career on earth and changes every 5 years that has meant no career is long-term viable and university riddles you with so much extra debt the more you earn that getting a good education doesn’t pay anymore. 5-10 years ago everyone was told to train and go into engineering and data analysis and all those jobs will now be gone from AI within less than a decade. Not to mention every job and cv has AI screening and is just about having a few key words on your cv nowadays I see my niece and nephew and wonder what the hell kind of jobs and education opportunities are even going to be left for them in the future.

Connections Puzzle #1063 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟦🟦🟪 🟪🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟪🟦 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪

I don’t think it’s about looking incompetent more than them abandoning their core voter demographics to chase a voter demographic that hasn’t voted for them in a generation and was never going to vote for them. The flat-cap Yorkshireman hasn’t voted Labour in a generation. Labour voters have primarily been younger, university educated, white collar urbanite liberals for decades. And the stricter immigration rhetoric, the red-lines over rejoining the European market, the refusal to properly vocally distance ourselves from the US and the red lines on taxes on the wealthy are all massive turn offs for core Labour voters. Meanwhile even if Labour get net immigration down to 0 by 2029, it’s not going to be enough for Reform voters as Farage will just move the goalposts and say we need to kick out loads with permenant residency or even citizenship who’ve lived in the uk for decades. It was always a fools game trying to win back voters on immigration. Just reading the John Curtice analysis and it’s still very clear that despite Labour constituencies going to Reform, very few voters actually go directly to Reform. Reform instead have largely captured the former Tory over 60s vote and many who were former “do not votes”, whereas far more Labour voters have gone over to the Greens and LibDems and therefore split that vote 3 ways.