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fredmaynard.bsky.social
opinions, alas, my own
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How far back do you have to go to find a great power just switching sides in the middle of a war under no actual pressure? Russia switching to Frederick the Great's side in 1762?

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

Good news obviously but I can't help but think of Angela Merkel, who claimed that climate change was an existential threat and then just refused to do anything like this

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Unfortunately a lot of neo-colonialist discourse amounts to "trade happens under capitalist conditions therefore there should be no trade" which is precisely as useful as "if we build more houses developers will make money, therefore do not build houses"

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Occasionally I would wonder when James Bond will drive his first electric car, I hadn't appreciated that the blocking factor was actually the industrial decline of Aston Martin www.theguardian.com/business/202...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

"So when you failed to deal with this existential crisis, South Korea collapsed?" "No, it did not." "Kids, help"

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Charles de Gaulle a good exception, any others?

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

The great joy of the Badenoch leadership is watching Stephen Bush very slowly go insane

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

"right wing men stew in their bedrooms online while left wing men go to real life events and date attractive women" I think we're a few years off the general societal backlash against Online, but once we get there, the above might be the narrative that does the trick

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

One of my best friends is from a sleepy, wealthy small town in the south-west of Germany. He said, so many of my parents’ neighbours are rich and bored, with little to complain about, and they’ve radicalised themselves at dinner parties and online. In their aimlessness, they’ve bonded over hate.

submitted 10 days ago • 319 comments

Something I keep thinking about is that the unemployment rate in Saxony has dropped by 14 points in the last 20 years, a record of untrammelled economic success by any standards. The AfD just got 37% of the vote there. If deliverism doesn't work, what is our backup plan?

submitted 9 days ago • 7 comments

At least when we betrayed Czechoslovakia the communiqués had decent grammar

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

I just got served an AI-voiced YouTube ad from a Chinese dropshipping company that offers to import illegal handguns to the UK, which feels like the most on-the-nose confluence of signs the world is going wrong I can conceive of

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

DDL's delivery of "I *decided* the constitution gave me war powers" is so good at getting to the heart of why constitutional law is so tricky. He does what he believes is right and prays it is also legal. Which, as the film points out, is only a hair's breadth from the act of a dictator.

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

I am glad that Bell has a ministerial post but you have to admit the idea of him being the most junior person at HMT is very funny

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

There seems to be a Silicon Valley consensus around AI that roughly corresponds to the Henry Ford "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" school of thought - people want AI products but just don't know it yet.

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

what are the rules with becoming of head of state under a nom-de-guerre, is Jolani now going to have to appear under his legal name or is there going to be an "artist formerly known as" situation

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

tis the season to be al-Jolani fa la la la la lalala

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMm2... Political prisoners walking free from jail is a wonderful thing, and has always been

submitted 87 days ago • 0 comments

There is an episode of Rev where the joke is about how you're meant to do a job interview for bishop when bishops have to claim they don't want to be bishop. Conclave is this joke extended to two hours and a Hollywood budget.

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments