#sketchy politics

[tomorrowusa]

« He (Rishi Sunak) is also, however, the hapless human epilogue to a sprawling coalition of Conservative philosophies, from Cameron-era austerity to reckless Johnsonian populism and Trussite madness. None of these conservatisms even tried to grapple with Britain’s underlying weaknesses. They brought an unravelling of the public realm, the self-inflicted wound of Brexit and a new level of misbehaviour in public life. They left us weaker than ever, but that feels like history now. There’s no point gnashing our teeth about it – and given the state of NHS dentistry, gnashing would currently be an unwise experiment. Let us look forward.

The bigger the majority, the more space for political courage, and the greater the chance of success. Labour is likely to be facing a rudderless Tory opposition entangled in an existential debate about its own future. Moderate Tory MPs will feel intimidated by Faragist local parties, much as moderate Labour ones were by Corbynite activists eight or nine years ago.

[ … ]

So, when people say this campaign is changing nothing, it isn’t true. The deeper the collapse of the right and the bigger the Labour majority, the faster and more dramatic will be the impact of the coming government. There will be a change in culture and atmosphere that none of us can, yet, quite imagine. »

— UK journalist Andrew Marr at The New Statesman seemingly making a case for a large Labour majority in the July 4th general election.

Andrew Marr is one of the most respected political journalists in the UK. He's strongly implying that a Labour government would be bolder than the relatively unostentatious Labour election campaign.

Of course with Rishi Sunak obligingly making so many unforced errors, Labour needs mainly to project an image of greater responsibility and more concern for Britons than the Conservatives.

Labour borrowed from Barack Obama the word Change as their slogan for this election. But Miranda Green at the Financial Times podcast suggested that Move Fast and Build Things, a reverse borrowing from early Facebook philosophy, might convey what Labour intends to do when finally in government.

Ms. Green and FT commentator Robert Shrimsley suggest that this election could be a political "extinction event" for the Tories.

Here are projections for party composition in the next House of Commons after the July 4th election. The chamber has 650 seats with 326 needed for a majority.

This is from Britain Elects, a project of The New Statesman. It's dated June 16th.

And this is from Electoral Calculus, a polling and political consultancy firm. It's dated June 14th. It includes the 18 seats in Northern Ireland.

Both projections currently put the Conservatives at under 100 seats. And it's within the realm of possibility that the Liberal Democrats could outnumber the Conservatives and replace them as the official opposition. The Lib Dems have been running a good campaign.

[gogoutoriart]

This was supposed to be a XL birthday doodle but I ended up really not liking it so I never posted it outside of my stories 😅

I feel like this is what my bd cake looked like this year lol

[casually-eat-my-soul]

I might get hate for this but I’ll it always find it funny that Scott pushes Derek to work with the argents (season 3 ish) and and struggles to understand why when he refuses to; When Scott himself refused to work with Derek for the longest time becuase Derek killed Peter.

Like brother in Christ, I get it, objectively Derek kinda manipulated Scott into helping kill Peter, by promising that he would be able to kill Peter and turn human (he did say it was a fat chance and just a legend). Yes he knew that the legend was bullshit but telling Scott was the best way to get him to help.

Dereks been a werewolf his entire life. He knew that he couldn’t kill Peter alone and that the risk of letting Scott kill Peter on a chance of turning human wasn’t worth it. — Best case it happens Scott turns human, Derek maybe becomes an alpha werewolf (the spark transfers) and still creates the hale pack — maybe derek stays an Omega, goes feral and gets hunted down. Or maybe Scott turns into an alpha doesn’t handle it well, goes feral, and than gets killed by either 1 Derek or 2 hunters.

So yes maybe he did manipulate Scott into helping but in the end there is some logic behind Derek killing Peter. So I get the betrayal behind not wanting to be around him

On the other hand pushing him to work with the argents when they killed his family and tortured Boyd and Erica isn’t and not understanding why he doesn’t want to work with them is objectively funny. Even stiles could read the room, shot out to the one scene “would you rather I burned his house down”

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

a thing about me: i love to design soulmate aus that are the most inconvenient for the focal characters

(because the premise essentially demands that they get some kind of destined, happily-ever-after love at the end of the story, i like to treat myself to a little (or a lot) of emotional torment first!)

anyway, i just realized that the funniest possible soulmate situation for labru is one of those "the first words they say to you" tattoo AUs, because

laios does not notice, lol

kabru overthinks whether/how to tell him because being soulmates complicates the narrative he's been building around conquering the dungeon

[cheriboms]

doctober day 28: metallic

local old man doesnt "get" the youths, pt 1/??

[lunarharp]

milet - us

[definitelynotnia]

normalise saying "I don't have enough information on this topic to have an opinion on it"

and then staying out of it completely rather than going along with wtv opinion u imprinted from three random posts/reels/tweets and having weird misinformed debates with full confidence

[ehcahache]

Madrid: the GP won't be paid with public money, the promoters are private investors, the main one being IFEMA

Also Madrid: *owns more than 90% of IFEMA, meaning the GP will be payed with public money 🤡

[yurilad]

— TERRAS TOWN (3/?) | ask to be +/- from tag list.

[redacted]... it's me, i'm [redacted] i'm so cold...

[ladychandraofthemoone]

Traintober Day 31: Lights Out

“ it’s unwise to intrude upon “his” universe, being one of its many protectors the last things trespasser see whenever they be harming another or endangering others isn’t pitch black of darkness or blood red or even the pure white,”

More Cryptic!Kyle who’s got many forms and appearances he took on-In my humanoid au, the mask can be separated in an effort to subdue though it’s now illegal, as it causes an intense amount of agonizing pain if the humanoid in question isn’t subdued with any green water or drug substance where there usually there is just a small box door etc. but in some extremely rare cases ex. Kyle, there’s actually a face underneath but it is an actual nightmare, and I should also mention those with faces underneath are extremely aggressive like do not be within a radius near them proceed with caution vibes, they will attack anyone on site. Perhaps those trespassers could’ve learned a lesson, but it was too late for them. .

[airlock]

y'know, I've been hearing about the new Zelda's $70 pricetag a lot -- but I've also been enduring a rough patch at uni, so I haven't been able to do any of the thinking or researching that I'd want to do before throwing my lot in there. regardless, there are two... fragments of points that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while, and I never see anyone getting close to them, so I figured I might as well lob them out to the internet to see if they'll bounce around enough to inspire some completed thoughts in anyone

the first thing: while Nintendo was the one that decided to take the first shot here and now, with a very highly anticipated title in one of its absolute flagship franchises, the matter of fact is that bumping up the Standard AAA Game Pricetag -- and to $70 exactly, even -- has been a talk in the industry for many, many years now. it's not a coincidence, or even just the industry's typical unparodiably vulture-like behavior, that as soon as Nintendo took the first shot, other studios were tripping over themselves to pin their next big releases at $70 as well.

(if you ask someone speaking for the studios, they'll probably tell you that $60 has been a downright generous pricetag for a long while now given how much production costs have soared in that time, and even $70 is still a steal all things considered. a less charitable point of view would invite you to consider why production costs are increasing so much anyway, despite that consumer satisfaction has long stopped increasing proportionally to that metric. is it an oversight, or a decision in the service of someone besides the consumer? that's not a rhetoric question, incidentally -- I did say these aren't finished thoughts.)

the second thing: first worlders have been much worried about what a price hike in games would mean for children, and to that I say: you may have more insight on the present situation if you look to countries where this sort of thing already has or still does happen.

I can say at the very least that, for a solid while here in Brazil -- that solid while having peaked around the 00s -- economic factors made the seemingly reasonable pricetag worldwide an oft-unthinkable one for most consumers (and the few that could actually afford videogames straight-up were still a stingy lot regardless). and what we did about it was... rampant piracy. and I don't just mean downloading shit, I mean that parents were buying their kids the sketchiest disks you can imagine to pop into their PS2s at home that probably weren't 100% the legit article either. owning a completely legitimate copy of any game was seen as some sort of Collector's Edition kind of rarity, even. anyway, I'm not exactly making predictions about how your first-world markets are going to adapt when/if videogames seriously slip out of the average consumer's grasp -- again, unfinished thoughts here -- but if you've been thinking about it, then this kind of thing may be worth studying up on.

[b4ll4d33r-06]

demons won im gonna draw my old man in the bring it on! rin outfit. IM GONNA DRAW STANLEY W THE BUTRERFLY ON UR RIGHT SHOULDER IF I EMBR TO ASWELL

im gonna b the sanest kagamine twins fan AND doomed old man yaoi fan pls trust.

[shrikeseams]

I love that au idea!!! (What about findis though?)

I can't lie, Findis is like. Schrödinger's Finwian to me. Does she exist? Does she not? Depends on what's convenient!

In this instance, while we could certainly push Feanor and Nerdanel's elopement... there just feels like way less pressure to flip the birth dates. What does it matter if Feanor's eldest is slightly older than Finwe's third eldest and second son?? Findis's presence has already legitimated the Finwe-Indis marriage, and without finwe asking feanor to not make their private muddle public... I can't see Feanor agreeing to give the seniority to Fingolfin. Unless you make elopement extremely scandalous? Which still doesn't quite do it for me. 🤔 I'm open to suggestions, though!

[irk66697]

probably a controversial thing to say but palpatine is like the trump of the star wars universe.

[poseidonsbastardson]

If anyone tells you Cyprus is a democratic republic, please laugh in their face.

It's a fucking Junta-esque oligarchy.

[jade-curtiss]

The grooming ptsd thing that makes your trust for someone goes to shambles if they give you an expensive gift unprompted.