frankPodmore
@frankPodmore@slrpnk.net
London-based writer. Often climbing.
- Comment on Why do news articles and such call the governments of countries/groups of countries after the capital? 3 days ago:
Yes, very useful for subtle distinctions like this!
- Comment on Why do news articles and such call the governments of countries/groups of countries after the capital? 4 days ago:
Yes, it’s metonymy, as people have said. You also get it in similar contexts where people will name a building such as ‘the White House’ or ‘[10] Downing Street’ to refer to the governments of the US or the UK.
- Submitted 5 days ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 4 comments
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Me.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
By far the most coherent response, thank you. I still think the contexts are sufficiently different that I find it odd that anyone would feel the need to paint his face on a wall thousands of miles away.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
I think you probably understand why it’s ridiculous when right wingers say that socialised healthcare = Stalinism, and so on an identical basis you should see it’s ridiculous to describe the people of the UK as oppressed slaves.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Touche.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Ironically, your statement lacks nuance.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
There is quite a range of options between continuing as you say we are and shooting people in the street. Again, enacting arbitrary violence against perceived enemies is literally what Trump is doing. This is not the path to take. Like all people calling for this kind of violence, you are assuming it won’t be inflicted on you or anyone you like, but that is not what history suggests will happen.
Incidentally, another way the UK is not like the US is that carbon emissions are falling in the UK.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Okay, this isn’t a court and it’s absolutely fine for people in casual conversation to say he did something when there’s strong evidence that he did.
Strictly speaking if he yelled ‘I did it and I’d do it again’ at the cameras on his way into court, he’d still be ‘innocent till proven guilty’ but no one would insist that actually meant he ‘hadn’t done it’.
In any case, as to our wider discussion, you’d then be disagreeing with many of the people here and arguing that people painted his face on a wall because he didn’t do anything.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Fictional characters and real people are not actually the same kind of thing, and how people read them are not equivalent.
- Comment on Is there some school to learn how to be a sycophant? 1 week ago:
Any MBA?
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Brian Thompson was not a billionaire. As for the ‘unaccountable’ class our side of the pond, just yesterday a prominent political megadonor and former hedge fund manager was banned from working in financial services, so neither side of your analogy stands up to very much scrutiny.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione, accused of US CEO murder, depicted in London mural 1 week ago:
Honestly, aside from what Mangione did and whether it can be justified, I just think this shows how America-brained so much of the UK is. The guy lives and committed his crime on the other side of the ocean in a context which does not exist in this country. I would personally prefer for him not to be executed but I don’t understand what anyone’s thinking when they use him as an icon over here.
- Comment on Why there is no photos of earth from space? 5 weeks ago:
/s indeed, but you did remind me of a cool image: the Earth not from space, but from Mars!
- Comment on Lessons for Britain from Milton Keynes 5 weeks ago:
Build houses on the mountain peaks and treehouses in the forests, all linked together with a series of zip wires. I see no downsides to my plan.
- Comment on Lessons for Britain from Milton Keynes 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, it was very much built in the car is king era, which has left its scars. I’ve never lived there but I visit fairly regularly. It’s not perfect but it’s got a lot going for it. Cycle provision seems to be getting a lot better, for one thing!
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 16 comments
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
This is a weird experience for me. Normally when I demonstrate that things are, in fact, the case, people just go very quiet. This is the first time I’ve had ‘that’s too much proof’ used against me, so you at least get some marks for originality.
I do indeed get my information about the news from the news; again, it hadn’t previously occurred to me to do it another way, so I guess I’m learning a lot! I’m not learning things like ‘Why does this person I’m talking to on a website think websites are objects of scorn?’ or ‘Where do they get their news if not from the news?’ but, still. It’s not nothing.
Nevertheless, you’re straying into ‘not even wrong’ territory, here. The things I said are happening, are happening, and while you can believe anything you like, including that things that are happening, aren’t happening, that doesn’t change the fact that they are, actually, happening. Since you’re not amenable to things like evidence (about the news… from the news), I hope you’ll forgive me for ending this conversation. Feel free to get in one last shot, but I don’t intend to reply.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
I was asked to prove first that Labour are moving us away from oil dependence, and then that they are investing record breaking amounts, approving record numbers of green projects, that they have eased planning law to build more green infrastructure, and that they’re planning to do more.
The sources more than prove this. For example, when we have more solar power, we will be less dependent on oil. Labour are making this happen. I refer you again to the many different sources discussing other ways Labour are making this happen through the record investments that are also cited in the sources.
I acknowledged that there’s some repetition. One for each of the claims would suffice, but I added more because I felt that ‘record breaking’ is a bit vague (record for this country or for a fiscal year or…?) so I used more than one source to show that this was a valid interpretation of the facts.
Your latter critique, that all the sources discuss what Labour ‘will do’ is just false. Some of them do, of course - because that’s one of the things you asked me to prove.
I actually have a folder of saved tabs called ‘good things Labour are doing’ because I frequently have conversations with people determined to ignore these things. Could they do more? Yes, of course, and they should. Are they doing the things I’ve said they are doing? Yes.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
I’m not especially keen on googling things for you, as it’s publicly available information which is easy to find. I think a better question, given that these are straightforward facts widely reported in both the mainstream and specialist press, is why you don’t think they’re doing anything.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
It’s interesting you cite Norway because as I said elsewhere in this thread, they are a major oil producer and exporter who are also committed to green infrastructure. That’s the exact approach I think we should take!
You are right that we have a lot of encouraging tech but deploying that takes time and money, and often an ‘upfront’ increase in carbon emissions. Other tech looks good but hasn’t been proven to scale up or is still in the trial stage (as you akcnolwedge).
As I said, I agree with you that Norway is the model to follow; but they produce a lot of oil.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
My line of argument does not require that the oil be used here.
- Comment on Former Russian President Medvedev buys 3.5-million-pound luxury yacht made in UK 1 month ago:
And they said British manufacturing was dead.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
Well, we need both and we should keep exploring both, although we can probably get away from gas sooner.
Norway is actually a great example of what I think we should do: keep using oil in order to fund a rapid transition to green power. It’s working well for them!
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
If it was in my power, I would certainly jail the CEOs and nationalise the oil companies, so I’m with you there.
However, stopping oil immediately before alternatives are in place would be a humanitarian disaster.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
The government is investing record amounts in green energy, approving record numbers of green projects and rewriting planning law so it can approve even more.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
I didn’t say the Saudis would produce less, I said we’d use the same amount but buy more off the Saudis.
We do need to move away from oil dependence (and we are), but until we do that, we need oil from somewhere and we may as well get it here.
- Comment on Labour is wilfully ignoring that the climate crisis is at a crunch point. 1 month ago:
If we immediately stopping drilling for oil here, we won’t use less oil, we’ll use the same amount of oil, but buy it off the Saudis, who suck.
- Comment on Too many young people find doing a day's work 'stressful', says Liz Kendall 1 month ago:
The problem with ‘cracking down’ on benefits is identical with the problem of ‘cracking down’ on immigration. These things are just not real problems and the people who think they are problems are flat wrong. You can’t do anything about unreal problems, because the people who believe in the fake problems just don’t believe in reality.
