Alicia

@agbutteriss.bsky.social

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British liberal. Apparently technically a "Bluesky Elder", according to that one labeller.

She/Her

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PSA: Labour have openly all-but outsourced their opinion on the (godawful) RSHE draft guidance the old govt issued to the consultation. Namely, this one, which closes on Thursday: consult.education.gov.uk/rshe-team/re... It is probably worth completing, if you care about this stuff.

Review of the RSHE statutory guidance - Department for Education - Citizen Space consult.education.gov.uk Find and participate in consultations run by the Department for Education

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Alicia

Reply to

Andrew Hickey

In the meantime, if you do have a new Lib Dem MP, worth writing to them and saying how much you support the party standing up for trans rights (even if you didn't vote for them and never will) so they get that feedback before hearing from the bigots (who *will* be out in force).0

I get why there are a bunch of "Best Tory gaffes and/or Lib Dem stunts" round-ups of the election campaign, but I don't get why "Rishi Sunak delivers entire speech with his back to the camera" isn't in any I've seen (h/t @cooraysmith.bsky.social from when it happened, but screenshot is mine)

I'll happily admit to being skeptical of Ed's leadership to begin with, but he has done amazingly well (like, in the zone where he only could have done better with the benefit of precognition to know just _how_ bad the Tory campaign would go)

UK, national parliament election: the final Liberal Democrat (LDEM-RE) seat tally of 72/650 seats is the party's best ever result since being founded in 1988. Including their Liberal Party predecessor, this is the highest number of seats since 1923. Special results page: europeelects.eu/uk2024

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Alicia

If your area got a new Labour MP then it is your duty to email them and say that you are happy the Tories are out but that transphobia should have no place in the party. Make Starmer gently walk back his support for Rowling's position!

Emailed my local Labour candidate. We're a swing seat. Let's at least let them hear from us.

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Alicia

The BBC’s “Seats Changed” map is wild. You can now walk from the coast of North Devon up to Bicester and then down to Eastbourne without ever leaving newly Lib Dem seats. Tired: The Blue Wall Wired: The YELLOW SNAKE

Since there's somehow discourse: the current "15% of MPs writing letters of no confidence" rule is probably fine to stick around for this term, because the would-be letter writers didn't all magically keep their seats. (E.g. the, uh, 'loss' of Miriam Cates alone abates a lot of it)

Wait... People who witnessed the Truss ministry think it's a shock that Truss wasn't capable of giving a speec?! Did we all forget the "the Prime Minister is not hiding under a desk" incident?

Also: my heart rate is pushing 100, which sounds only slightly high but I'm normally slightly bradycardiac so...

Mum has Sky news on and, uh, I do somewhat appreciate the "Exit Poll Imminent" like the boss warning in a schmup, but not that it's hidden The Countdown.

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Alicia

COUNTERPOINT: Voting is Good, actually

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Alicia

www.attitude.co.uk/news/keir-st... Good editorial from Attitude ahead of Starmer's mealy-mouthed nonsense

Why Sir Keir Starmer’s op-ed for Attitude cannot run without context or correctionwww.attitude.co.uk Events have overtaken us, and it’s not good, writes Attitude publisher Darren Styles

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Alicia

Keir Starmer, the future prime minister, explicitly saying that trans women don’t have the right to use women’s toilets, which we have always been using, is giving the green light for people to harass us and do violence to us, as well as to cis women deemed not feminine enough. Don’t vote Labour.

Okay, uh, I know nostalgia has a powerful draw but, uh. Why, exactly, are notional _Dems_ calling for Biden to stand down by going "you know, like LBJ did!"? Like. That did very much end in Nixon becoming president? (and also was completely different in most other respects)

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Alicia

According to Sky, the Lib Dem’s have ‘one last stunt’ ready for the end of the campaign

According to Sky, the LibDems have ‘one last stunt’ ready for the end of the campaign.

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Alicia

Taurus: Crippling melancholy and chill.

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Alicia

Ed here pointing out that what the transphobe parties, Tories, Reform, Alba all want is, wel, just weird

The weather forecast is looking pretty good for polling day where I am...

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Alicia

Not about the debate: I write in The Guardian about the legacy of austerity www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...

How the ‘unforced error’ of austerity wrecked Britainwww.theguardian.com The Tories’ cuts were an obvious economic blunder, but their disastrous consequences are still piling up – and there is little hope Labour will reverse the damage

I s2g every time a Reform figure does or turns out to have done something awful Farage or a spokes does the full Narcissist's prayer thing (e.g. "The recording was a set-up. With a crisis actor. But the other stuff's just vulgar pub talk. And definitely a minority. Who we're _totally_ ditching.")

Actually, I guess they do both make the other cringe (the Online Left are [establishment lib voice]_so_ uncourteous and overly honest; Establishment Libs think that 'cozy consensus' politics is actually appealing to most people) so it does make sense after all...

Y'know it's funny how much Online Leftists and Hyper Establishment 'Liberals' hate each other, because they both have politics that revolve around avoiding things that make them cringe above all else.

Honestly I probably should have, like, read the link _before_ commenting - it does seem like AI generated (which is why it is actually different to e.g. www.msn.com/en-ph/news/o...)

on a little further reading, people are getting got here by fake news, the “scientist” in question is basically a short film director and instafluencer with no connection (as far as i can tell) to the actual startup cognify, who are based in germany and are a data science provider, not an AI firm

Well, I'm glad I kept my powder dry on the Torment Nexus joke because boy howdy is this a Torment Nexus if there ever was one. (also: literally multiple episodes of Black Mirror, I think?)

oh my god now there's a "future of prison" startup that says it will use AI and brain implants to plant fake memories into the brains of criminals, "rehabilitating" them in minutes instead of years and I am going to spend the rest of the day screaming now sciencetimes.com/articles/509...

Cognify: Revolutionary Prison Concept Uses AI and Brain Implants to Fast-Track Criminal Rehabilitationsciencetimes.com Discover how AI and brain implants are transforming rehabilitation. Read more on Cognify's innovative prison concept now!

Well, to be fair the rhetoric about women, and the sancity of womanhood that must not be tainted by maleness, from anti-trans quarters _is_ very reminisent of arguments relating to female suffrage in the early 20th Century. It's just. Y'know. On the 'against' side.

I must admit, I always feel utterly... confused when people talk about sex segregated spaces as "hard fought rights". Like. It's just so utterly inconsistent with, like. Trivially obvious facts of history like the use of them to exclude women from 'male' spheres of life since literal antiquity.

Just re-reposting this given that Labour seem desperate to appease JKR et al...

In light of the Labour manifesto: Trans rights _are_ women's rights. I don't mean that in a "Trans Rights Are Human Rights" way, I mean that anti-trans policies are inevitably harmful to all women (as women), and, conversely, that trans-positive norms are a proximal boon to women.

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Alicia

i remember the 24th June all too well I was on set for [REDACTED BECAUSE DISNEY WILL RIP MY COCK OFF], and you know how movie sets are at 6AM: there's chat, there's activity, coffees and teas are being prepared, people read the papers except that day it was eerily quiet over Pinewood Studios

No, really, this is a thing that happened (link: twitter.com/jk_rowling/s.... Archive link: archive.ph/TcgRi)

How has bluesky not blown up with the fact that JK Rowling has just endorsed the Communist Party of Britain at the next election?

Honestly, I think it is actually more accurate to say that Putin's invasion of Ukraine led to the expansion of NATO and the EU. E.g. there's whole dynamics there that mean at least some EU member states would've stonewalled the inclusion of Ukraine (as they did for other countries!).

Now it's had time to percolate, a thing about Nigel Farage's "Putin was provoked by NATO and EU expansion" is that, like as much as the controversy is around the 'provocation' part, ultimately the claim of NATO and EU expansionism, as such, is also denial of Ukraine's agency (independent of Russia)