It's an actual thing. When it feels more like you have a teenage son than a partner it's hard to get turned on by them, even if you weren't already too exhausted from clearing up after them.

I used to live round the corner from a strange little place that sold cassette tapes (what we used for music and sometimes even data before CDs, for those too young to know). Everyone was convinced it was a front but it turned out it was a world famous tape supplier. Just happened to be based in my quiet little back street.

The newsagents next door to my last place have to have been a front though. Shelves were half bare, only ever stocked with stuff that doesn't go off. Always two or three guys hanging out in the back room, looking slightly surprised if you wanted to buy something. Cash only, no cards (not that unusual round here but they usually have a minimum purchase rather than just no card machine at all these days).

They were absolute sweethearts. Took loads of deliveries for us, always really nice about it. And that's more evidence that it's a front. Proper criminals are the best neighbours anyone could ask for because the last thing they want is complaints bringing the police to their door.

I don't know why you want fascists crawling all over your server but good luck with Gab2, I guess.

It's instant verification for all their accounts and an instance that won't disappear on them.

The East India Company.

Look, you're not entirely wrong. But this is a very gendered experience (as in, disproportionately affects women). Of course it happens the other way around, just nowhere near as often. You don't have to get so fucking defensive about it. This is the world you live in, deal with it.

Most people have more than the average number of legs.

Unearned income is taxed at a lower rate than earned income. I mean, pretty much everything about capitalism tbf, but that particular thing is saying the quiet part out loud and it still gets almost no attention.

We're in the middle of a global fascist spasm. If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it's not happening, I think Threads is trying to be that place.

Using the wrong picture is almost as ridiculous as reducing his career to Dumbledore. For shame.

Yes. It's happened to me and it is a head fuck. The email was from a business with a perfectly legit email address.

1. The left is not a mirror of the right.

2. Ordinary right-wingers are not funding these things themselves, they have billionaire backers.

3. They have billionaire backers because fascism is power protecting itself.

4. Power is protecting itself from the left.

The foreigner in question almost certainly did not know the age was 21. This happened to me in the US. Sitting with my mum and sister in the hotel bar, having a quiet beer. Then I get asked for my ID and it all gets very confusing. "But I'm 18, what's the problem?"

There are people alive today whose grandparents were born into slavery. Given that slavery did not actually end with the civil war, and Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, and the current dismantling of civil rights era laws, there are hundreds of millions of people alive today who are still directly suffering the aftermath.

So no, it is nowhere out of living memory and I am astonished that there are two people in one place so ignorant that they are willing to argue that it is.

“90% of content moderators are foreigners. What we have experienced during the process is very hard… spending three months without receiving a salary, in a country that isn’t yours. You cannot pay the rent, you cannot buy food,” Nkuzimana explains. Cori Crider – co-director of Foxglove, a British organization that is supporting the workers in this process – adds that this situation “forces [the content moderators] to continue accepting insecure jobs to remain in [Kenya], despite the serious risk to their mental health.” Moderators have resorted to crowdfunding, so that they can support their families as the legal fight unfolds.

Just highlighting the exploitation of migrant workers here, like much of Twitter's remaining workforce, apparently. It also reminded me of this story: The fishermen:

On November 22, Joanne circulated a letter among the migrant crew. “I have been made aware the crew members are contacting an outside representative,” it read, possibly referencing a call Quezon made to Stella Maris seeking help for Susada. “I am also aware that crew members have been leaving their port without permission or making our office aware. Sadly the actions by these crew members are beginning to ruin the trust and faith we have placed in our Filipino crew.” It concluded by noting they would make reports to local police and UK immigration authorities “if necessary”.

These people are fucking sick. The whole system that denies people the legal right to work just so they can be more easily exploited is fucking sick.

I'm going to go and punch some walls. Laters.

How Target Knew a High School Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Parents Did

Facebook turned over chat messages between mother and daughter now charged over abortion

This springs to mind.

Individual choices are constrained. Admonishing people for living in this world that we live in is straight from the Big Carbon playbook.

Every right-wing accusation is a confession.

Please don't speculate on names. Apart from the legal risks to the poster of the name, and possibly the platform/mods, it's not right to cast aspersions without evidence on something this serious.

Names that are clearly in the clear are all good, of course. As is solid evidence, which will likely come soon enough.

Quitting with no notice is one of the funniest stunts you can pull on a bad manager and I will not hear a word said against it.