It’s obviously from the parallel timeline in which German became the official language of the United States.

Not even that; 0.1% per trade would bring in a huge windfall. Even something negligible like 0.01% would bring in nontrivial amounts of revenue.

The problem is that being above paying tax has become part of the identity of being rich, and the very idea of even a negligible amount of one’s wealth being taken away to be given to your inferiors is unacceptable, and the rich will defend every fluctuating cent of their wealth as a non-negotiable matter of honour, even if it means burning down the world.

Cutting out everyone but the middleman

Finally, they can make a robo-Rogan that can radicalise young men at a fraction of the cost

BlueSky has already received finding from venture capital, and so will need to find a way to monetise its user base. Once enough people depend on the site for their social connections and friend circles, the promise of decentralisation will be quietly removed, APIs will be restricted (as on Reddit/Xitter), terms of service updated to ban circumvention, and the user-controlled algorithms modified to deliver your eyeballs to the advertisers and your data to data brokers, and before long, it’ll be an Instagram-style slot machine, where you mostly see ads and AI pink-slime, but keep pulling the lever in case there’s another update you care about in there somewhere.

Their US and Australian divisions are solid. The UK one varies, and has some decent people, but also has a persistent infestation of TERF/SWERFs. A few high-profile ones have left after their comments became irreconcilable with the paper’s ostensibly liberal/progressive line, but you still get regular Observer opinion columns about pronoun-mongers sexualising our children or other scare campaigns. There’s a rumour that the editor, Kath Viner, is herself a TERF and personally protecting them, though I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other.

They could spin up a Mastodon instance, but given how lousy their UK editorial department is with TERFs, it would be justifiably blocked for transphobia.

The ones I’ve seen look machine-made, probably in huge quantities. They’re thin, and look slightly less disposable than a paper coffee cup.

America, fuck yeah!

The village on Lunt near Liverpool considered changing its name to “Launt”, because vandals kept adding a top stroke to the L in signs.

The UK did this about a decade ago by a 2-to-1 margin, on the same grounds. Commentators in Australia (which have had ranked choice voting for generations) quipped that this was final proof that Australians are smarter than Brits.

Wasn’t that also their issue with Falun Gong, which started out as an apolitical mass meditation/exercise movement, though committed the crime of challenging the Party’s monopoly on organising mass activities of any sort?

I read that as “flurry of executions”, and though “sounds plausible”

Coulsdon is the new Scunthorpe, it seems

They still make these

Do they want to get France kicked out of NATO?

Very fine people, according to the incoming president

The law currently would give them a choice, but Musk has the government and the Supreme Court to change this.

Olympia at least had a good punk/indie/riot-grrrl scene in the 90s, and made its mark on music history that way

They need to add “as fast as possible” to that, as time is on Russia’s side.