Posts by Opfoss@c.im
(DIR) Post #AwzjrD37S9qP9lXPVI by Opfoss@c.im
2025-08-09T13:19:36Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Labour has been pushing this for nearly two-decades. There has always been an authoritarian streak in Labour. There has always been a "document all *legitimate* toilers" streak in Labour. There has always been an exclusionary streak in Labour.Don't think that this is a new proposition from Labour, as they try and take ground from Reform. All roads lead to data capture.This is just Labour using the narrative of Reform to push through their own authoritarian wet-dream. You only need to have a quick browse of former Labour Home Secretaries under Blair for confirmation.
(DIR) Post #AxascLir0ppY9FZ6oK by Opfoss@c.im
2025-08-27T11:18:04Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Huh. Ian Murray to cut some British steel for British ships.If I were to ask in which country is Navantia's parent company, would you know?Navantia UK? Where do they come from?Spain. Spain is the answer.You see, it has plants in the UK because it bought Harland & Wolff.The reason I know this so readily is:In May 2013, a submarine project (Isaac Peral, S-80 class) faced a significant delay due to the vessel being overweight. The Spanish Navy confirmed these buoyancy issues, which were described as a complex but normal part of the project. The Spainish Ministry of Defence was assessing the impact on cost and time, with the shipyard, Navantia, estimating a delay of 12 to 24 months. A proposed solution was to increase the submarine's length to 81 meters. After the S-80 class (Isaac Peral) submarines were lengthened to correct their weight and buoyancy issues, they were then too long for the docks at their home port of Cartagena. This necessitated a further redesign and expansion of the naval base.The initial design of the S-80 submarines was 71 meters. However, to solve the problem of being overweight, the submarines were lengthened by 10 meters, bringing their total length to 81 meters. The docks at the Cartagena naval base were only 78 meters long, meaning the newly redesigned submarines would not fit. This issue added to the already significant cost overruns and delays of the S-80 program. Reports from 2018 indicated that the necessary modifications to the docking area in Cartagena would cost an estimated €16 million.While the Spanish Ministry of Defence acknowledged the need to enlarge the docks, some officials stated that a project to extend the submarine pens had been in the works since before the submarine's lengthening became an issue. Regardless, the situation drew considerable public attention and even some ridicule, with Russian diplomats commenting on the series of miscalculations.So, Ian, go cut some steel, and hope your boat floats.A submarine that couldn't submerge. That's right up with an air-support and ground-attack aircraft with concrete for radar.https://news.stv.tv/east-central/ian-murray-to-cut-steel-on-barge-that-will-help-deliver-three-new-navy-ships
(DIR) Post #Aym324tSKz4TD3zEn2 by Opfoss@c.im
2025-10-01T16:56:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Natasha_Jay The whole nation should change its name to Leeloo Dallas as an act of malicious compliance.
(DIR) Post #B0KhSTkrPiB7klICzg by Opfoss@c.im
2025-11-17T09:54:05Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@strypey Hey, look, it's Spectre.Hi Spectre.
(DIR) Post #B0L22R50poTuxu8pzE by Opfoss@c.im
2025-11-17T10:45:58Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Note to Rachel Reeves, accounts, from Shabana Mahmood, centre of hell: as you can see, Rachel, it is entirely possible to asset strip from an individual for the purported benefit of the state, but it must always be from marginal to middle-class; never from wealthy downward.
(DIR) Post #B0Y4PIYy281xOxWLiK by Opfoss@c.im
2025-11-23T13:09:32Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
The Internet of Things: A Hall of ShameI recently saw a post describing a "smart" kettle that required an app or voice command to boil water. The user noted, "I can have tea as long as they have a wifi connection. Welcome to the 21st century."This is the defining characteristic of modern tech-horror: a device made functionally inferior to its "dumb" ancestor by the addition of a microchip. The failure mode of a normal kettle is a pot; the failure mode of a smart kettle is a brick.If you think the kettle is bad, here are five devices that prove we have peaked as a species and are now sliding rapidly backward.1. The $400 Bag Squeezer (The Juicero)Price: $400 (Launch price: $700) The Superior Alternative: Dieter Rams’ classic Braun Citrus Juicer ($60) or Human Hands ($0).Juicero was a Wi-Fi-connected cold-press juicer. You bought proprietary bags of chopped fruit, put them in the machine, and it pressed them.The "Smart" Feature: It read a QR code on the bag to ensure it hadn't expired. If the internet was down or the bag was expired, it would refuse to make juice. It is vital to note that the QR code checked the expiry of the bag, not the actual juice quality.The Stupid Reality: Bloomberg News revealed that if you just squeezed the bag with your hands, you got the same amount of juice in the same amount of time. It was a $400 rolling pin that required a software update to function.Furthermore, the machine’s refusal to operate on "expired" bags highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. The main selling point was the ability to bulk-make juice to store. But juice is already pre-stored in nature's perfect packaging: fruit. An unpeeled orange is essentially juice with a shelf-life, contained in a biodegradable wrapper. The Juicero was a subscription service for squeezing a bag, offering less functionality than a mechanically rotated plastic cone from the 1970s.2. The Bluetooth Salt Shaker (Smalt)Price: $199 The Superior Alternative: Peugeot Paris u'Select Salt Mill ($45) + JBL Go Speaker ($30) + LED Candle ($10). Total: $85."Smalt" is a large plastic centrepiece that holds salt. It looks like an "ergonomically" designed, off-brand Waterpik.The "Smart" Feature: It has a Bluetooth speaker (because you want your salt to play the soft jazz of Kenny G) and mood lighting, because you want your salt shaker to be a candle too. You can "dispense" salt by pinching a circle on your smartphone screen or asking Alexa to "dispense one teaspoon of salt."The Stupid Reality: It requires batteries and a firmware connection to use gravity. The dispensing mechanism is a study in anti-ergonomics. To use the app, you must hold the heavy dispenser over your food with one hand. You must hold your phone with the other. However, a "pinch" gesture requires two fingers on the screen. Unless you place the phone on the table—taking your eyes off the food—or have a prehensile tail, the geometry of seasoning your soup is ridiculous.Alternatively, you can talk to it. Because nothing kills the vibe of a dinner party faster than shouting commands at your table setting. This is objectively less functional than an electric button-mill (one thumb), a manual mill (two hands, one action), or the pinnacle of culinary interface design: putting your fingers in a bowl of salt.#InternetOfThings #IoT #TechFail #Enshittification #SmartHome #TechCritique #Smarter #iKettle #RightToRepair #TechHorror #CloudFail #Abandonware 1/2
(DIR) Post #B0Y4POXPooM1vsqC80 by Opfoss@c.im
2025-11-23T13:09:57Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
2/23. The Vibrating Fork (Hapifork)Price: $99 The Superior Alternative: A stainless steel fork ($2) and basic etiquette.A fork designed to help you lose weight by eating slower.The "Smart" Feature: It contains a motion sensor that tracks how many bites you take per minute. If you eat too fast, the fork vibrates in your mouth to tell you to slow down.The Stupid Reality: It has to be charged. If you run out of battery, you just have a very heavy, thick fork. Also, users reported that if you "scoop" your food (like peas) rather than "stab" it, the fork doesn't register the bite, incentivising you to eat like a shovel to trick the algorithm.Eating like a peasant? Shovelling the grub in there like a pig at a trough? The Hapifork brings you all the joy of being hit on the head with a guide to table manners by a Victorian mistress, all for the low cost of $99. It is essentially a vibrator for your teeth that rattles your dentures when you enjoy your meal too much.4. The Egg Tray with an App (Quirky Egg Minder)Price: $50 The Superior Alternative: The cardboard carton the eggs come in (Free) + Eyes.Numerate enough to earn currency to purchase useless goods, but too lazy to count to twelve? The Quirky Egg Minder is the kitchen egg accountant you never thought you needed.The "Smart" Feature: It connects to Wi-Fi to tell you how many eggs you have left while you are at the store. It has LED lights next to each egg to tell you which one is the "oldest."The Stupid Reality: It turned a glance into a tech support issue. Most people eat eggs in the order they grab them, rendering the LED "aging" system useless. If the battery died or the Wi-Fi disconnected, it often reported you had zero eggs when you had a full tray. It solved the non-existent problem of "egg blindness" by introducing the very real problem of "connectivity failure."5. The Hairbrush with a Microphone (Kérastase Hair Coach)Price: $200 The Superior Alternative: A comb (invented approx. 5500 B.C. in Ancient Persia).The "Smart" Feature: It has a microphone that listens to the sound of your hair breaking. It also has an accelerometer to tell you if you are brushing too hard.The Stupid Reality: It requires you to sync your hair-brushing data to an app. It "gamifies" brushing your hair, giving you a "hair quality score."It must be noted that the "hair quality score" has nothing to do with the actual biological state of your keratin; it is simply a game score. It effectively turns your morning routine into a round of Guitar Hero for your scalp, where you must hit the strokes perfectly to avoid a low score, only the prize is anxiety rather than applause.Archaeologists date the first combs to 5500 B.C. For over 7,000 years, humans—from Cleopatra to the architects of Ayurvedic medicine—managed to maintain their hair without a microphone. We could make a joke about the unruliness of Medusa’s hair here, but a microphone on a hairbrush wouldn’t do much for her split roots; every time a viper struck the bristles, the accelerometer would trigger a "Brushing Force Warning."The VerdictWe are filling our homes with landfills-in-waiting. We are trading simple mechanics for complex, fragile software.If a normal kettle breaks, you can still boil water in it on a stove. If a smart kettle breaks, it’s a paperweight that might be DDOS-ing a server. Remember that the next time AWS-East goes down.#InternetOfThings #IoT #TechFail #Enshittification #SmartHome #TechCritique #Smarter #iKettle #RightToRepair #TechHorror #CloudFail #Abandonware
(DIR) Post #B0yGm714fWqdty9GQS by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-05T13:21:40Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
(DIR) Post #B1PydHeDPl1jWEyVFY by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-19T20:34:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
And how far back does one need to go to achieve that. There seems a belief that Orwell wrote a fiction. He didn't. Arguably he wrote 1984 as a roman à clef (a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction), and predicted the future technologies which would be used. He isn't predicting a future solely, he is satirizing 1948. Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He saw first-hand how "official truth" was constructed to manage a populace that lacked the means to verify it.Orwell’s experience at the BBC during the war—where he produced propaganda for India—directly informed the Ministry of Truth. He saw how "the reporting of such to the populace" was a curated, technical process.The tools outlined were never a prediction of the future; they were the tools which were already in use. Orwell was never fiction.
(DIR) Post #B1PydPZtvgKU7B1AdU by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-19T20:43:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
You can likely see further parallels with his time in Spain, the POUM, and the "monsterfication" of enemies as pursued within the civil war within the civil war of 1937. Ally that to the British state's Blue Books of the time, effectively the bureaucracy of Empire, and you would be well on the way to 1984.
(DIR) Post #B1YWvd1HuWiDBr7VhY by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-23T20:04:43Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
*Cracks neck. "Yeah, I'll play."*Greta Thunberg was arrested under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign that read: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS".The police allege she was displaying support for a proscribed (banned) organization. However, a linguistic analysis reveals a critical distinction. The police are reading keywords; grammar dictates she was supporting people, not an organization.Here is how Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)—a tool used to analyse how language functions in real contexts—deconstructs the sign to show why the arrest is linguistically flawed.In English, when we group words together to name something (like "Red delicious apple" or "Palestine Action Prisoners"), there is always one word that anchors the meaning. We call this the Head or the Thing. Everything else is just decoration or categorization.Let's look at Greta's object of support: "Palestine Action Prisoners"The Head (The Thing): PRISONERSThis is the core reality of the sentence. The physical beings she is referencing are incarcerated people.The Classifier: PALESTINE ACTIONIn grammar, this functions as a Classifier. Its only job is to tell us which type of prisoners we are talking about. It restricts the category.To prove this, we can swap the classifier for something else. This is called the commutation test. If she wrote "I support [remand] prisoners," she is not saying she "supports remand" (keeping people in jail). She is supporting the people subject to that condition.If a lawyer says "I defend [murder] suspects," they are not "defending murder." They are defending the suspects.The police have conflated the Classifier (the label) with the Thing (the people). Linguistically, you cannot simply lift the modifier "Palestine Action" out of the phrase and claim it is the object of her support. It is glued to the word "Prisoners."Linguists use a system called Transitivity to map "who does what to whom." It traces the energy of the verb. The Actor (Doer): "I" (Greta) The Process (Verb): "Support" The Goal (Target): "Prisoners"Imagine the sentence as an arrow. The arrow of "Support" is fired by Greta. It flies over the words "Palestine Action" and lands squarely on "Prisoners."Grammatical Reading: Greta → Support → Prisoners (who happen to be associated with Palestine Action).Police Reading: Greta → Support → Palestine Action (the organization).By ignoring the word "Prisoners," the legal interpretation creates a new sentence that Greta did not write. She is validating the human rights of the individuals (the Goal), not the manifesto of the group (the Classifier).Language doesn't happen in a vacuum. We must look at the second line of the sign to understand the first. This is called Appraisal Analysis—how we judge value and stance.The sign reads: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS" "I OPPOSE GENOCIDE"The second line acts as a "decoder key" for the first. "Oppose Genocide" sets a moral framework. It is a statement about humanitarian law and saving lives. Because the bottom line is about human rights (opposing death/genocide), the top line must be read in the same context.She is not supporting "Palestine Action" because she loves their logo or their specific tactics; she is supporting the prisoners because she views them as victims of the same system she is critiquing in line two. The sign frames the prisoners as humanitarian subjects (people suffering), not political agents (people acting).The VerdictThe arrest relies on "Keyword Searching"—seeing a banned word and acting on it. But grammar relies on structure.Structurally: She supported Prisoners.Semantically: She supported Human Rights.By ignoring the grammar of the Noun Group, the authorities effectively erased the word "Prisoners" from her sign, changing her statement from a defence of human rights to an endorsement of a banned group. 1/2#HumanRights#FreeSpeech#RightToProtest#CivilLiberties#UKLaw#GretaThunberg#PalestineAction#Activism#SocialJustice#PoliticalPrisoners #LanguageAndPower
(DIR) Post #B1YWvjWLjx7jLvhOwy by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-23T20:18:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
2/2If I hold a sign that says: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION; I DON'T SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION"...do I support the proscribed group?Under a basic "Keyword Search" approach (the method effectively used in the arrest), the answer is a confused "Yes and No." The machine sees the banned word count = 2.But under Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this sentence creates a Logical Paradox that renders the statement legally unanswerable. Here is the logic sequence of why this sentence breaks the "Guilty" verdict.If we read "Palestine Action" as a Proper Noun (The specific banned organization) in both halves of the sentence, the statement is nonsense.Clause A: I support [The Group].Clause B: I do not support [The Group].This results in a logical nullity (A and Not-A). A court cannot rely on a statement that cancels itself out. To find meaning, the human brain, and the law, looks for a way to resolve the conflict.To make the sentence make sense, we instinctively shift the meaning of one of the phrases. We stop reading it as a Name, and start reading it as a description.This is called Nominalisation."Palestine Action" (Proper Noun): The corporate entity/group."Palestine Action" (Common Noun Phrase): The process of taking political action for Palestine.Because "Action" is a word derived from a verb (to act), it is linguistically fluid. It can slide between being a "Thing" (the group) and a "Process" (the deed).Once we allow that shift, the sentence suddenly has a valid, non-criminal reading:"I support [the political act of resistance]; I don't support [the proscribed group]."Or, depending on which clause you assign the value to:"I support [the group]; I don't support [the specific acts]."The Result: Semantic Erosion By placing these identical phrases side-by-side with opposite polarity (Support vs. Don't Support), the text muddies the water. The capitalized letters lose their authority. You can no longer prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the speaker is referencing the group, because the sentence structure itself suggests they are distinguishing between the Entity and the Concept.The VerdictThe police rely on Lexical Rigidity—assuming a word always means the same thing. This defence relies on Functional Ambiguity.If a sign creates a "Zone of Indeterminacy"—where a legal reading is just as grammatically likely as an illegal one—the text cannot serve as a confession. The grammar itself provides the reasonable doubt.So, if you feel bold, go get yourself a t-shirt reading "I DON'T SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION; I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION", and make the police fucking explain its meaning to you. They won't be able to. They will still pick you up for "Reasonable Suspicion", but that is where the fun may begin.You see, as we have illustrated, the "unreadability" creates a conundrum, where an offence may or may not have been committed, and they don't really know. The defence is already baked-in grammatically. And the definition there is piss-weak:"A person in a public place commits an offence if he wears an item of clothing... in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation."It would be for a legal defence team to defend the position, but the ready baked in defence, perhaps, gives credence that any arrest would constitute Illegal Detainment, as:The arresting officer lacked objective reasonable grounds to suspect I was a supporter of a proscribed group, because the text on my clothing explicitly contained a negation of that support ('I don't support...'). The officer relied on a selective reading of keywords rather than the full semantic context, rendering the suspicion irrational and the arrest unlawful.#HumanRights#FreeSpeech#RightToProtest#CivilLiberties#UKLaw#GretaThunberg#PalestineAction#Activism#SocialJustice#PoliticalPrisoners
(DIR) Post #B1ahPxpeU15iHehXSi by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-24T19:44:01Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
(DIR) Post #B1f7OXQcXb43XqoUoS by Opfoss@c.im
2025-12-26T19:03:24Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
Thelma knows.
(DIR) Post #B3AcPXlu2ApVHkPeoC by Opfoss@c.im
2026-02-10T06:39:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
And? So What? It is all the rage. Ask Donald.Dance, CIA puppet, dance.https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wnjqzrv48o