I released a new “Observers” cartoon using the new engine, there was a whole farce of an election campaign, and the UK votes today! Last newsletter of the old regime!
Go and vote the bastards out!
Me
For the first time in ages, I released a cartoon: episode twelve of The Observers.
This time the aliens discover a planet where the people use private bank debt charged at interest as a medium of exchange!
One thing that’s great about this episode is that it’s the first one using Godot instead of Unity.
The lighting is just totally different and some things look better and others worse.
But it’s a whole new system, and the whole system is better.
Clarity of operation. Rewrite when you actually know what you’re doing not just exploring what a system can do.
There’s some gif/clips on the release thread
The Observers have often used illustrative flows of energy between bubbles, and the animating of the rig for it in VR was a time-consuming and finicky process. So the rewrite was always going to improve that.The new system looks like a flow of coins, since the aliens are talking about money. But I hadn’t really even noticed I was doing that when I was building the particle effects. It was supposed to be more like a energy blob really.
Improv
As well as doing a weekly improv course myself all month, also went to see other people’s shows. What an improv-heavy month.
Went to a hoopla improv performance, the main acts being “Boy Band” and “Man Band” both of whom were mostly making up songs, none of which were really young enough to call boys and one of which was a woman.
They were good though, making up songs around their acts.
Then since I’ll be doing it myself in a couple of weeks, I went to see some group do their first ever live improv show.
Lots of those short-form games that work well in a party, character stuff in fleeting scenes mere seconds long.
They all did pretty good, made us laugh a bit. None of ’em threw up from nerves or ran crying from the stage nor even really fumbled for words.
Top top is if you’re gonna get type-cast, try not to get typecast as an animal.
I really prefer some kinda exploration of narrative and actual story-telling over the quick parlor-games skits though. Expect I’d enjoy their next show more, and to enjoy doing my second more than the first.
Our date on the 20th coincides with a cider festival in the pub there, and cheep cider all night. So ours will be better in that sense at least. Dunno why we end up with a weekend date and they do a Tuesday.
Election
Have I done things other than rant about politics during the election campaign? Apparently not a lot other than that, no.
Debate
Watched the seven-way debate on the BBC.
I expected to agree with the Green more than the others, but only about half the time even then.
The Line-up:
Conservatives: Defending their appalling decade in the job in which everything has gotten worse.
Labour: Promising to steady the ship and not change very much.
Lib-Dems: Not sure in advance how they’re any different to Labour. They may be more keen on rejoining the EU.
SNP: Scotland should have home rule, but everyone seems to think they can only have that if Westminster agree, and Westminster won’t agree, so that leaves them a bit stuck.
Cmyru: Like the SNP they can’t form a UK national government, and also can’t quit the UK without permission.
Reform: Nigel Farage’s party blames everything on migrants, and may well be a spoiler candidate in many Conservative seats.
Greens: One of the parties thinks maybe we should do something about the coming environmental catastrophe but expect everyone else to roll their eyes at them and call them extremists.
Galloway’s party will not be attending, nor anyone from Northern Ireland.
There’s a blow-by blow guide at the original thread
The depressing thing is that what we have here a fairly wide range of ideas.
Quite a lot of the country realize that crime is solved by caring not a truncheon, that investing in a green economy can cause an economic transformation, that threatening to destroy cities full of innocent people is insane and wrong, that government should be local, that not everything is best run by corrupt businesses skimming profit, that migration can enrich a country financially and culturally.
But none of those voices will make it into the house because of the utterly broken electoral and media systems.
The two parties that can win disagree with everything I mentioned there, and can’t do otherwise because of the dynamics of their coalitions.
Even if they do agree with any of that, they have to lie and pretend in order to get the positions they want.
That’s what’s broken, and switching to Labour for the next half-decade will be a relief, but it won’t fix it.
Nigel Farage was right. The corruption is from the electoral system, and nothing can be fixed until we have a more proportional representative government.
That is literally the only thing he was right about though.
Economic Growth
Apparently Labour were saying they need to get some economic growth in order to fund removing the child-benefit cap?
If they are saying that and meaning it and not just trying to manipulate voters, they do not understand economics in the tiniest little bit.
There are thousands of kids living in basically poverty conditions. They are not contributing to the economy, they have no money.If they were to have some money, they would spend that money on good and services.
Those sales would be taxed! The wages of the extra staff employed to meet the increased demand would be taxed! The savings of the rich people who end up with that money in their off-shore accounts can be taxed!
Ending that benefit cap is how you get the growth! You give the poor money, they spend it, investment comes to meet the demand.
What is the actual plan otherwise? Let everyone stay poor so that there’s no economic demand an so no private investment?
The idea that you can cut your way to growth is utterly deranged, the kind of backwards economic thinking you expect from a Conservative.
I do hope they’re just lying to get elected again rather than actually believe the lunacy they say on the TV.
My Seat – Islington South
Political leaflets at this address seem bizarrely to be arriving in pairs.
Two copies of the Reform one, two copies of the Green one, two copies of the Lib-Dem one.
The Lib-Dem one might offer a clue as to why for they are not identical, one is for the seat just north of here and one for my actual seat.
Apparently the border-changes are confusing people. Possibly including me. Guess this address ended up on lists for both seats. Do I get to vote in both? They’re all just like 3-bullet-points of things anyone paying attention already knows and a paragraph about the candidate (Except Reform, who probably don’t know who their candidate is).
It says the green candidate is a software engineer and an economist but this doesn’t necessarily mean she’s evil I suppose.
Switching to postal votes because now they’re all like “papers please!” at the polling booth and it just makes me mad in ways that taking it out on a poll worker would be pointless.
Fairly nice to have the ballot early, so you can look it over. Search on the candidates a bit.
Could do that anyway I suppose but never really actually did before.
Turns out the person on the green leaflet and the person for the green party on the ballot are different people, so indeed I got the green party leaflet for the constituency next door, the candidate isn’t a software engineer and economist after all.
He’s a former diplomat who made a film about becoming an anarchist.
Crikey.
I guess then later became an archist again instead and now wants to be a green MP.
Cool cool cool.
There’s an indi standing but all you can find in search first-page is a linked-in post saying he’s standing, with three replies asking about policy, all ignored. Eventually found his website and it’s just bland bollocks about cost of living such as you might find on any partisan site, so not really sure what his point is.
We have a reform candidate, he lives in Woking. Outside London and not even our side of it. Not much local support to pick from in trendy Islington I’d guess.
I didn’t know the SDP were still a thing. Is the the same as the old SDP? I suppose none of the parties are the same as a generation ago really.
Is there any point voting at all? Emily Thornberry will retain her seat, almost certainly increase her massive majority, quite possibly be leader after Starmer.
She don’t need my vote, and I won’t give it to a candidate who likes the fact I live in a seat so safe my vote is pointless for sure. Never vote for candidates against electoral reform. We have exchanged emails on it.
Gotta go with the anarchist green diplomat I guess.
Hope he gets his deposit back.
Maybe I should watch his film some time.
Door Knocking
Election campaigning is apparently all about knocking on doors and talking to people. This is how you “Get the vote out” apparently.
But, surely nobody changes their mind on who to vote for based on doorstep arguments with strangers?
MPs themselves could turn up on their knees begging and it wouldn’t make a difference to my vote at all. No lies they could tell would sway me.
Yet I see that it really does swing elections.
How on earth does it work?
Do people really often just vote for whoever last asked them to do so on the doorstep?
Mad.
Conservative Manifesto
They want you to feel threatened everyone! Only the Conservatives can protect you:
* From the country’s “enemies” like China
(who make most of our stuff).
* From “Immigrants”
(who provide half of our services as the population-bulge retires).
* From Eco-zelotory and the expense of maintaining the planet
(by building lots of dirty carbon-burning electricity stations to burn so much oil we’ll have enough to sell to our neighbours, even though it’s not really economical to export energy more than a few hundred miles and a decentralized green electricity network is cheaper and cleaner)
* From tax
(Tax Cuts by cutting back on welfare other than pensions. )
* Halving national insurance contributions, especially for self-employed.
(Even though welfare is already cut to the bone, the working-poor are so poor they don’t pay tax)
* From education and kids:
(Fewer university degrees, more training apprenticeships)
* Forced labour for national service.
(Even though forced national service weakens an army)
* From homelessness
(Build 300,000 houses a year , 10% fewer than the Libs promise, but by abolishing building safety laws!).
* No more stamp-duty. Help-to-buy schemes.
(even though these things subsidize house-buying thus driving up house prices. They are good for landlords I guess?)
* From children: Free Childcare
(so you can get to work on poverty wages instead of looking after your kids)
* More teachers! More cops!
(Especially more cops);
* Sex means sex.
He says we need certainty, rather than the uncertainty Starmer would give us, but he doesn’t seem all that confident of it.
Labour Manifesto
Labour has changed, so they no longer want change, they want stability.
Stability will be achieved by:
* Tough spending rules to avoid inflation.
* No tax rises on working people
* Cutting NHS waiting times
* Border security cops
* New National Energy Company
* Half a new teacher for each school.
Starmer says “Stability” really a lot.
He wants to create economic growth, as number 1 priority. How?
* Reform employment law, more employment rights and higher wages
* Reform investment systems, national wealth fund to invest in steel and jobs.
* Reform planning rules, so we can build more.
* Being Pro Business
* Tax oil & gas to pay for new British Energy company.
* Chase tax-avoiders to pay doctors & nurses
What we have here is basically a promise to be like the Conservatives only less chaotic and broken and a bit more caring.
No radical ambition, no blue-sky suggestions, no desire to reform the country other than replacing the people at the top with less corrupt people.
Primarily, they want growth by fiddling with regulations to encourage the private sector.
They will not do extra taxes on people, they will not do big spending, they want stability not change. They’ve already changed.
Which is exactly what the last 3 prime tory prime ministers said they wanted too.
It isn’t that a national wealth fund investing in a national energy company is a bad idea, it’s just that it’s unambitious and on such a tiny scale it can’t really affect anything.
Lib Dem Manifesto
If someone gave me loads and loads of money to run an election campaign I’m not sure I’d have any better ideas than Ed Davey seems to have had.
Not gonna win, might as well just go to theme-parks and water-sporting and play tennis.
Quite like it. Makes him seem more care-free and normal than standing in a factory or wherever.
The actual manifesto isn’t terrible.
They wanna deal with asylum not by shipping people abroad, but in the sensible way of just funding the processing of asylum seekers.
On climate: Citizens assemblies like Just Stop Oil are asking for, ten years to insulate the housing stock, investment in renewables.
Unlike the big two, they actually say they wanna make the NHS more national and less private. NHS dentistry again.Build 400,000 houses a year, more busses, more electric trains, maintenance grants for students.
And of course Proportional Representation.
But on the other hand, last time they had a sniff of power they became conservative bootlickers, fucked the students, privatized chunks of the NHS, and helped push forward the Brexit referendum.
Suppose they’re mostly different people to that now?
But how much can you trust ’em?
If the Greens didn’t exist I’d likely end up on Lib-Dem.
Greens Manifesto
The gist seem to be tax the rich to invest in the country.
Hurray. Finally.
* Wealth taxes
The rich will finally have to sell some assets to pay their taxes. Anyone with ore than 10 million quid.
Wealth taxes are hard to implement, but you will never fix inequality with just an income tax and you can’t fix asset-price inflation and so house-prices without fixing inequality.
They wanna raise a full 50 billion a year extra and then spend it on investment:
* Insulate homes
Insulate Britain would get their way! Hurray! Cheaper energy bills for everyone.
* Build homes.
Everyone’s promising this. The green-party number is similar to the Conservatives number but the Greens will do it without lowering building standards to make it cheaper. They’ll probably build good insulated ones one assumes.
* CEO/lowest-wage ratio set to 10:1
Currently CEOs earn about 200 times the average wage of their workers. They are worth, they think, ten classrooms full of other workers.
Maybe it’ll encourage the CEO to actually give pay-rises?
* Scrap tuition fees & Ofsted
Education should be free.
* Personal Social Care free like the NHS.
No more Granny selling her house to be put into a home I guess?
* 15 quid minimum wage
Pay the workers what it costs to live damnit.
* More Rights to Roam
We will walk these green and pleasant lands even if the farmers don’t like it.
* Stop All new Fossil Fuels
This is in fact needed, because “net zero” is bullshit, but not for the reasons Farage or Galloway say, but because carbon-capture is basically impossible. The “net” part is bullshit, it’s gotta be actually zero
* Phase out nuclear energy
As is traditional, all parties must have at least one terrible policy which would lead to terrible results.
The Green one is phasing out the only non-carbon energy source which is reliable and works all night and day every day.
* Wind power to 70% of all power.
Good, but the wind don’t always blow, where are the nukes to back it up eh?
* Decriminalize possession of all drugs.
The drug war was always a counter-productive fraud, it’s expensive, ineffective, encourages a police state, and doesn’t even really stop anyone taking things. It’s stupid, axe it.
Ought to make supply legal and licensed really too but they ain’t promising that.
* Support Ukraine and Palestine against the aggressive countries attacking them.
War is bad.
* “No use first” on nukes.
Oh, surprising, they aren’t promising to scrap trident.
* Brexit – Rejoin “when the conditions are right”
Well, not making as big a thing of it as the Libs, but it’s there.
The Greens are clearly the sanest of the parties with the most progressive policies that would actually help people and help prevent climate change.
So of course the media tell everyone that they’re crazy and the political system fixes it so they can’t possibly win.
Reform Manifesto
They don’t have a manifesto, because they are a private company owned by shareholders (majority Farage), not a political party.
They wanna stop migration, exit international conventions on refugees and human rights and privatize the NHS.
That last one isn’t very populist you wouldn’t think.
No more detail from me on this “contract”, can’t bare to look at the odious man.
EU Elections
It’s not just the UK! The EU had a vote too. The bad guys made gains.
But I didn’t vote in the EU elections , because four years ago our xenophobia-crazed media-pumped electorate voted to remove ourselves from any say at all in how the union is governed and cede control of the union to Germany.
They said this would be taking control, rather than rather obviously giving up power and influence. Which I find confusing but there it is.
So no vote for me, no representation in the parliament, no influence over EU policy. So it goes.
US Elections
Didn’t stay up for the grandpa vs grandpa debate. but I watched some clips of the grandpa of the year show and they both seemed like they had a few moments of lucidity so I suppose that’s good.
Mostly incoherent deranged mumbling from one of them and incoherent deranged self aggrandizing ranting from the other.
But as I say, both of them occasionally seemed like they were aware of their surroundings and capable of responding.
Good luck America! Hope you have a backup system.
My Releases
Starship
A new Starship episode! “Observers” are back in episode 12: Money
Watch it flat-screen or in VR on the website here: https://starshipsd.com/observers/money/
Wordcloud Tarot – Is Farage Right?
We ask “Is Farage Right” finding Nigel was a rich private-school city-banker born into wealth, who always had a love for power and money, and the fascists who have it. He took Russian money to accelerate the decline of the UK through Brexit, and is now seeking the splendours of power through partnership with fascists. He will retire in luxury even as the country sinks into ruin.
In the end it doesn’t matter if Farage is right, because his reason for saying it is his naked attraction to Putin’s power, and in that he is Far-Right.
http://wordcloudtarot.com/readings/2024-06-25-isfarageright/
Reading
“Cognitive Gadgets” by Cecilia Heyes,
In which she tries to argue that most of the distinctively human ways we think are developed and taught socially rather than genetically.
I’m sympathetic to the argument. The record seems to show huge jumps in tool developments and general human success at speeds genetic evolution would find tricky. To be human is to be adaptable and we can just make up new ways to do it by changing our culture.
But I didn’t really follow what she was talking about half the time. Her metaphors and descriptions seemed alien to this programmer. Going on a lot classifying some types of cognitive function as “grist” and others an “mill” and I still don’t really know what either type is supposed to mean or have any idea what grist is and what it has to do with milling, let alone with different types of thinking.
She describes some interesting studies, and I didn’t really need convincing that many human faculties are produced just from asking each other to develop, training during childhood.
But if I had needed convincing, this wouldn’t have done it, even having read it I don’t really understand how she thinks about this stuff.
[Don’t tell me how to grist a mill]
Watching
Doctor Who’s second half was phenomenal.
Oh, what a great season. Every episode was marvellous.
The final episodes wrapping up all of 40 years of weaving around time, pulling in the memory-Tardis from the Tales Of The Tardis compilations, back-referencing every doctor, all of creation turning to dust, all those great graphics. Sutekh looked fantastic. Bad doggo!
Impressive amount of raw grief and guilt in Nchuti’s primal scream out of the Tardis door into the dead universe when all is lost.
Loved ’em using the Mavity gloves and bungee to just enleash the dog-creature, and it looked amazing as the Tardis dragged him by the next through the time tunnel, scratching out to see reality through it’s walls.
It’s all very silly though, and makes no sense. The special thing about Ruby’s mum is just that she’s not special, and yet the curiosity over the conundrum prevented Sutekh from taking his victory.
🤔
Sad to see Ruby leave. She’s been great. Imagine wanting to hang out with your incredibly provably ordinary mum that abandoned you, instead of zooming through time-tunnels in the crazy man’s box visiting the Beatles and space goblins and stuff.
Links
Things I liked:
Election
• – UK Elections – Last Week Tonight
John Oliver on the UK election, he wants us to wash the tories away.
• Two Shades Of More Of The Same – Another Angry Voice
AAV summarizes the political satiation: “Keir Starmer is just as committed to maintaining the rotten status quo as Rishi Sunak, even after 14 years of economic stagnation, failing public services, soaring rates of poverty and inequality, and egregious profiteering by privatisation parasites.”
The Government™ has made an ad about the existential risks AI poses to humanity, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative
Big Data
I was listening to today’s Mindscape Podcast and thinking, hey, this guy seems unusually wise to the ways of big data and the compromises of big tech, and why people make those choices and what they mean.Which isn’t that big a surprise given that writing a book about that is why he’s on the podcast.
I figure someone with that kind of data-nous probably quit twitter ages ago and was on Fedi instead. And yep. There he is.
Nice interview, good exploration of this compromise between using the system and getting used by it. I avoid the trackers enough that I can’t really use Google, they just give me traffic-light identification games all the time instead of a search-box.
Media
• – Exposing Media Smears Against Jeremy Corbin – Peter Oborne
Peter Oborne details some of the many lies in the press about Corbyn:
Collectively they show that everything written in the papers about Jeremy Corbyn should be assumed false unless proved otherwise. It’s the wild west out there for the former Labour leader: any smear will do, however false and malicious, and Britain’s mainstream media is often ready to leap to attention
Economics
• Immigration – Gary’s Economics
Gary talks about Immigration: It’s a wedge-issue that divides the working class and it’s a lie that immigrants are why you can’t get a job or a house. But Gary doesn’t know how to stop people believing it, and then Labour failing to fix inequality meaning they don’t fix the problem and the hard-right win next time there’s a global economic crisis they can blame the government form
Funny
• Bob Mortimer – Richard Herring’s Podcast
Bob Mortimer on Richard Herring’s podcast, coz they’re funny together. Bob is funny with anyone though really.
Around the Fediverse
Did you notice Facebook threatening an AI Terms and Conditions switcheroo?
People all joined Facebook because they didn’t want a public blog, especially one their boss might read. They wanted one only their friends could read.
And now Facebook are gonna just feed the whole lot into their mega-mind and let every advertiser and recruiter and boss you ever work for ask it about you.
There’s no way to stop them coz they’ll do it even if you object, even if it’s illegal, even if they expect to get a giga-fine. I don’t expect they really honour delete requests. Things sometimes pop back into existence eh?
Well, Fedi isn’t like that. Nobody owns it here. Either everyone has the right to feed it into their mega-minds or nobody does and it’s really not legally clear which. 😉
Some things I liked this month:
Fediverse
@snarfed.org@snarfed.org Has updates about the blue-sky bridge:
It’s been a month since the last Bridgy Fed status update, so it’s time for a new one! I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month on user-visible improvements and bug fixes, notably more complex post types and links, as well as underlying infrastructure.
Details below….
Journalism
@dangillmor@mastodon.social writing about journalist’s supporting Musk Social:
It is an ongoing disgrace that journalists continue to support Musk’s evil business. If you know a reporter who’s using Twitter, please tell him/her to stop disrespecting the audience, and the craft.
https://www.notus.org/media/elon-musk-x-politics-addicted-twitter
@dangillmor@mastodon.social Is also glad Julian is free, but worried about precedents:
1) Assange is not my hero. Wikileaks did important work early on but it lost the high ground in 2015-16.
2) His imprisonment was an outrageous abuse, and he understandably took the deal.
3) The guilty plea will leave a sword hanging over ALL national security journalism going forward.
4) Maybe you don’t think Biden will use this precedent to shut down vital investigations, but you can be absolutely certain that Trump would — and so will future administration.
@LabourHub@newsie.social Links to an explanation of the situation in Corbyn’s local Labour party:
Something rotten in Islington North
Over 70 members of Islington North Labour Party are today asking voters to vote for the independent candidate Jeremy Corbyn, including the overwhelming majority of the CLP’s executive committee.
Below we reproduce their letter in full.
First, we publish an exclusive article from a group of Party activists who are bitterly angry at how have they have been treated.
Marble Computer
@jonathanhogg@mastodon.social Helped re-build a marble computer:
Before EMF, I had the pleasure of meeting artist Jem Finer and collecting his gigantic marble-run artwork Supercomputer.
We put it in a tent as a participatory experiment.
I expected we’d give it away in bits at the end as nobody could store it.Excitingly, Look Mum No Computer came to the festival and asked if he could take the whole thing! I spoke to Jem and he seemed cool with that, so this is the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80om0OpKZxU
Web Degradation
@futurebird@sauropods.win Investigates fake people writing fake AI blogs about ants, in a thread beginning:
I decided to find out if any progress had been made on the science behind why some ants are attracted to electrical fields. After filtering out exterminators (it’s so demoralizing to search for information on creatures you love and find nothing but people who know nothing about them boasting about how they will kill them all) I found what looked like a blog. But, who the heck is “James Brown”? Never heard of the dude. Maybe he could be my new friend if he likes ants enough to blog about them!
Anarchy
@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social Talks about ownership of real estate in his thread:
I want to talk about what’s really happening with chain retail stores, because there seems to be a lot of confusion about it in this world. It’s easier for me to think in concrete terms, so imagine an Autozone in Los Angeles. First of all, the land it sits on is owned by someone else, who charges rent to the corporation but has no other role in the process.
These charges are reflected in the prices of their products, which means that when you shop there you’re paying a commercial real estate owner for nothing more than owning the land the store sits on.
1/8
@byroon@mastodon.me.uk Talks about the political ratchets:
Some people promote a weird incremental approach to politics which they never justify. “We just need to Get The Tories Out”. As if simply not being in gov weakens the ability of the right to win future elections. People might stick with the incumbent if things are going well but they’ll want change if things are going badly. Unless you actually change the system to be more democratic I don’t see that you have shifted the balance of power in future elections
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