HipPriest

Love his Thursday Next books to bits!

Yeah I get that too now you’ve said it!

It looks like a shady dealer in an orange hoodie.

The worst thing to do would be an inorganic botch job on here to fill a gap when there's no need, you can read that content elsewhere.

Anyway, it's not an automatic guarantee of engagement or interaction. It's purely a hack move.

I'm happy to use Reddit if I feel I can't find anything to read on Kbin. You are allowed to use both you know?

I mean yeah I vape, that makes sense because it wasn't the nicotine itself which was killing my lungs.

Apparently nicotine itself is as bad for you as caffeine, the worst thing about it is it's insanely addictive without giving much of a high or anything in return…

That's a very black and white way of putting it. As long as you're an adult who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and you're not spending hours obsessed with it I don't think it's unhealthy. The way you phrase 'avoid it completely' makes it sound like you're going out of your way to avoid it already.

(I think the problems are coming through with the generation being 'brought up on porn', and thinking real sex is like it is in the videos online but that's a different story really.)

Can cigarettes be used in a healthy way? Eh, only in very specific scenarios

Gonna have to bite and ask what very specific scenarios smoking could be healthy?

I've only heard of Mary Seacole out of the black Britons from history we're expected to know of.

I actually googled the musician and he has a relatively interesting story but it's also not at all surprising people don't know who he is today - he had one piece which was very popular called the Feast of Hiawatha which according to Google was played regularly until 1939 and then doesn't seem to have been revived. Seems he was much better regarded as a conductor.

Anyhow, historically this country's establishment has made it hard for black people to get famous until the 20th century, something that this academic surely knows. She's either naive or deliberately skewing her results for headlines by asking for names from a time when her top rankings include a Roman Governor!

From a British perspective I know there was always a huge political obsession with maintaining the 'Special Relationship' with the US up until Trump came in and Brexit happened basically simultaneously making us more irrelevant.

It's still there in a half hearted transactional way when it comes to intelligence sharing, day to day stuff etc. But in terms of the PM sucking up to the President photo opportunities to get some media attention - that aspect seems to have died pretty quickly.

It strikes me there are a lot of similarities with our politics right now though - lack of faith from the voters, rampant cronyism, lawbreaking heads of state FFS, culture war obsessions dominating the discourse when the average person is more worried about affording their rent/mortgage at the end of the month. I'd say our government is dysfunctional on the same level but the difference is we stopped being a superpower way back when.

I'm rambling way off topic, sorry. Reading that just reminded me of when our politicians used to be all over the American ones as being the glamorous ones to suck up to (whether the public agreed or not) but things have definitely changed.

I'm guessing the 2 uses you already know are 'joke' and 'to retch/nearly vomit'?

Another meaning of 'gag' is to physically tie something around their mouth to stop them from speaking (like in films when people get material or tape in their mouths to muffle their cries for help in a kidnap scene? That material would be the 'gag')

Obviously in this instance it's not a literal gag, although I'm sure there's plenty of people who wish it could be. A 'gagging order' is a metaphor for not being able to speak about things

They're doing a separate crusade against disposable vapes. If they're going after smoking I'd imagine they'd be trying to encourage people to vape to quit.

It's all hypothetical because it's highly unlikely he'll still be in power to put this plan in to action come the next general election

8/20 here. Proud of getting some right. Really shocked about the answers to some!

A tricky test indeed

My sister still lives there and from what she says it's not too difficult. Some VPNs work, others are on the 'no longer work' list and at big events they mysteriously stop working.

She's not technically minded, she'll just be using an app.

I just started using it for Android the last month or so when Chrome dropped the flag feature that let you toggle dark mode for websites with system dark mode.

I have a VPN with an adblocker so that aspect of Chrome never bothered me so much. Chrome felt like it worked slightly smoother but at the end of the day a browser is a browser and Firefox does the job. (Samsung's browser is actually surpringly good for those with a Samsung device looking for a Chrome alternative)

Firefox does seem more trustworthy overall, although I've learned by now that trusting tech companies is not a sensible thing to do.

I've been using a VPN, blockers, all sorts in the UK to disguise some of my online activity from Google and other companies so if I'm just doing the same thing to avoid the government there's not much difference.

The fact that I still use Google products is a lapse and due to laziness on my part…

Of course it could be a vote winner for Starmer at the next election to say he'll repeal it on free speech grounds of he played it right. But then the opposition could spin it as him not wanting to protect children online so he probably won't have the guts to risk it.

WhatsApp certainly won't, they own the UK chat app market and it's not like they genuinely give a shit about privacy.

The others - remains to be seen.

VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let's see, Wikipedia…

I'm interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she's much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.

The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it's very rare you'll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it's so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.

Hey cool that's by Zoe Quinn!

Point taken though - didn't do the whole thing but more then a few I thought were Hitler turned out to be Lovecraft. Never actually read any of his books. (Lovecraft's that is. Well Hitler's either thinking about it…)

A lot of people can hold low key prejudices against the abstract notion of a group of people but make exceptions for people that they actually know, it's really weird but that's humans for you…

Another vote for Kbin here - the atmosphere seems so much more chilled from what I've heard and seen on Lemmy. The feddit instances also seem pretty cool.

Sorry this weird stuff is happening to you