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Cake day: May 22nd, 2026

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  • Honestly? Let the wave of neo-ludditism pass?

    Is it necessary to respond to every Internet fad? Ignore it and eventually it will go away. Pretending otherwise is like thinking King Cnut can hold back the tide.

    (Or, if that’s not good enough - just ban promotion entirely. I don’t give a rat’s arse if code was AI generated or artisanally hand-woven onto magnetic cores by Jeff Minter in a kaftan - the real problem is spam, so just stop all promotional posts and the problem goes away.)


  • Christ.

    When will the forward-planning sub-committee of the AI tagging steering group be meeting? I presume they’re going to need to submit a motion to the ways-and-means council sub-sub-committee first and then maybe we can expect a notice on the procedure to follow for interim planning permission to write a post? Will interim planning permission allow the post to be made (subject to the countersignature of the automated post approval bot) or should it be saved in Drafts and then a separate submission (noting the interim permission and any objections received in the consultation period) be made to the full plenary session of the zoning committee?

    Or do we just say “fuck this shit” and find another group?










  • Unfortunately, the data doesn’t appear to be collected in a systematic way across the whole country, but one police force - West Yorkshire Police - does have data going back long enough for a trend, at least for the arrests on the Communications Act.

    For West Yorkshire Police, the arrests under the Communications Act are pretty much constant from 2008 (around 200) to 2024 (actually a little lower, 152).

    Given the changes in social media penetration over that time (things like the iPhone and Twitter barely even existed in 2008,) for the rate of arrests to have remained constant throughout I would suggest strongly indicates that there is a very strong element of “absolutely nothing to do with social media” in those numbers The Times quoted.

    The numbers for the Malicious Communications Act are less easy to parse, because they don’t go back far enough, and also they show a massive drop in the last 6 years.

    All of this of course could be slightly moot - because in 2023, a new act (the Online Safety Act) was passed which specifically relates to “arresting people for their social media posts” [TM Musk et al].

    In 2024, West Yorkshire Police made 5 (five! Count them! Hell, you could invite them all round to your house for dinner) arrests under the OSA.

    “Thousands” of people are categorically not being arrested for their social media posts in the UK every year. Or even every decade.


  • Except the number cited isn’t for social media posts. It’s all arrests under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which covers far more than social media (as you can probably guess, given social media didn’t even exist in 1988.)

    That includes arrests for threatening phonecalls, sharing indecent images (child porn and the like - you lot who bang on about Epstein all the time are meant to be against that, right?) - and not only on social media - stalking and harrasment adjacent offenses like nuisance calling, and a whole host of other offences completely unrelated to social media.

    In other words, it’s complete bollocks. And all from one woeful newspaper ‘story’. Congratulations for providing an excellent example of how one right-wing rag with an agenda can confect a story, then have it cited by a load of other ‘sources’ that don’t do anything beyond cutting and pasting the original lie, and then suddenly you’ve made a whole new fact.






  • I certainly don’t have a monarchy. But I think I’d rather have one than that shitshow of a so-called constitution you’re labouring under. Go on, tell us all about how those checks and balances work, why don’t you?

    It’s almost as if fucking your flag every night, reciting the pledge of allegiance every morning, and getting a bunch of lifetime political appointees to have a seance every time they decide if the King, err, sorry, President who appointed them is allowed to ignore the constitution isn’t quite the world beating system you thought it was.

    Still, don’t be down. Always another country to invade and brown people to kill, eh? That’ll make you Great Again.


  • I mean, the main difference with you lot is that the Brits were actually pretty good at it.

    Yanks on the other hand just go galloping in, fuck everything up, shit your pants, and then slowly slink back into the bushes while shouting “look, we won!” Make a few films about how sad it is that some Brave American Heroes get nightmares from all the defenceless children they shot/gassed/orphaned, realise that the Real Lesson is buying a bigger flag and forgiving yourself, rinse, and repeat.

    I see you’re at the “buy a bigger flag” stage.