The Octonaut

Bold of you to assume we didn’t just pick up the newspaper in the shop, flick to the funnies, shake our heads at what Andy Cap was upto today, and then leg it before Mrs Murphy tried to get us to pay

Luckily the truth is pretty far in the middle.

Yeah cool Malcolm, it’s been 30 years, you don’t need to give this speech every time uses it as shorthand for “in the context of our continued survival on it”.

I mean, sure, but this assumes that the killing is completely indiscriminate.

It is, but it’s important that you’re clear on that

Punishment? No. To get exactly what they actively chose to make happen? Of course.

Interesting that you’d frame “consequences if their actions” as “punishment”. Because punishment is usually a consequence of your actions, while not all consequences are punishment.

I don’t need to offer anything. I’m from a country with a parliament, ranked choice voting, proportional representation. But if you still don’t get that not Trump should absolutely be better than “whatever, I guess”, you deserve what’s coming.

OK but the first guy is still going to kill you

I’m really hoping that this wasn’t the reasoning people had for throwing the planet under the bus

I need you to understand that these diaper-wearing fucks would just buy both

That would have been a great article to post here a year ago

Much better. Please do stick to the pictogram communication, saves everyone time.

Well given that I’m neither American nor particularly aligned to Washington Post (I had to Google “wapo”) or the New York Times, it wasn’t a particularly interesting question. Having lived by the South China Sea however… yeah it’s probably more pertinent to my interests what Yogibear posts about that.

Did you forget your image macro?

I guess we’ll find out when Yogsy posts them some day.

Do we post opinion pieces on news communities now?

I do not wish to enjoinder with your Game Launcher and anonymous telephony

tax dollars

What

One of the good things about living in Ireland is that I’m 99% our government is neither competent enough to perpetrate elaborate crimes against its people without being exposed almost instantly, nor powerful enough that even fascists getting into government would have a meaningful impact bar providing a colourful humorous segment of the inevitable documentary on Europe’s second fall to the Axis.

I work for a telecom. In my country there is well regulated legislation that specifies how and when the police can ask the telecoms for cell location data, usually used for missing people.

They also provide large scale, anonymised data for crowd movement analysis. For example it was used to demonstrate how 60,000 people moved into and out of a stadium located for historical reasons in an old-fashioned, dense residential area, in preparation for the arrival of English football fans.

I think there’s some useful context, if not a good defence of this story.

It’s one of the original stories told by Reverend Awdry told to his 2 year old, measles-ridden child in 1942 war-era England (Wait, is this making it worse?).

Awdry would sing/recite old poems to Christopher, who then pressed him for further details that turned into a story.

For example, the opening of that episode of Thomas features the Limerick that prompted the story, which was around at least since 1902:

In the original story by Awdry, there is only a single tunnel, and the train is completely blocking the line and essentially ruining a business. So stubborn is the engine, that they have to dig a new tunnel beside the old one. The rails are removed and “a wall” are placed in front of the tunnel, for safety - to prevent trains literally running into the wrong tunnel and crashing. The Fat Director/Controller is also pretty unsympathetic deliberately - he commands people to push and pull the train out without success, but doesn’t himself help - “My doctor has forbidden me to push”. However the original books follow the realities of steam engine and railway operation far more closely than the TV series did (and as a result, the original series, closer to the books, were far more realistic than the later ones).

As portrayed in the TV show it definitely comes off more villainous. But in the original telling we have to take away 70 years of Thomas trains having faces, personalities, relationships and familiarity. When originally told, the Henry story didn’t even take place in the same “universe” - there was just 3 abstract stories about trains, loosely based on old rhymes and news stories.

I think he deserved it, don’t you?

Too cowardly to do anything useful to make amends. Just let another conscript fill his space.

Brave enough to drive over Palestinians and call them “terrorists in their hundreds”. Not brave enough to stand up to criticism from his countrymen. This is what spending billions of dollars on an asymmetrical war gets you: a system in which the weakest people can still take the lives of hundreds before being thrown away themselves.