The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉

Apropos of nothing... In September 1964, The Beatles were told their upcoming concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, would be racially segregated. Far from bowing to pressure from promoters, John Lennon famously declared the band would "sooner lose our appearance money" than play to segregated audiences. The promoters were forced to back down, and integrated the stadium for the concert. Brain Epstein later added an anti-segregation clause to all of the band's US concert contracts.

Dear Americans. A legit British English word which entered English from French in the 15th century, is "trumpery". Meaning something that looks flashy or attractive but is actually cheap, fake or without value. Applied to speech it's almost synonymous with the USian "trash talk". Also, long before Donnie came along, in British slang to trump meant to fart. I would love for y'all to co-opt these words because there is plausible deniability: they're already in the dictionaries! You're welcome.

They got bail 'cos there was no terror plot. They just wanted free fuel. "The five British men, aged between 23 and 25...were arrested outside RAF Fairford... Two separate military sources told Wiltshire 999s that they were thieves syphoning fuel, with barrels to store the stolen liquids...in three vans. Both said that it was unlikely to be confirmed officially...one describing the situation as “embarrassing”. The vans were reportedly found close to a diesel supply." https://www.wiltshire999s.co.uk/raf-fairford-thieves-syphoning-fuel/

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social I'm a particular fan of Hajime Narukawa's AuthaGraph projection, which divides the globe into 96 equal triangles, maps them onto a tetrahedron then unfolds them into a rectangle! As you might imagine, it looks bizarre when you're used to the Mercator, but it does preserve the true size ratios between land and water far better than most other projections.

If you sit down and really try to wrap your head around how far a light day is, you'll quickly find it's such a mind-boggling distance that it defies your imagination. Well, that's how far away Voyager 1 is from Earth, having passed that milestone earlier today after nearly half a century in space! And it's still partially operational, too. 🤯

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk As Minsky put it, we're in our "Wile E. Coyote moment", just waiting for everyone to look down.

@patrickhadfield@mastodon.scot I fear that like his friend, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon a.k.a. "Tommy Robinson", he'll only see prison time as an opportunity to fundraise and enrich himself by misappropriating donations from gullible followers, while his outrageous publicity stunt still attracts new recruits. That's not a reason he shouldn't go to prison, but it needs to be a stiff sentence. Any leniancy and he'll leave the court smiling inside, knowing his notoriety, influence and wealth have all been boosted.

Fellow Brits, I hope you're seizing every opportunity to talk with your friends, family, colleagues and neighbours about what Reform UK really stands for. "Nigel Farage has said he wants to “hijack” Donald Trump’s hardline ICE adviser and bring him to the UK “to secure our borders”. Speaking at an event in the US, the Reform UK leader also called for Europe to take a “more sensible view” of the US president’s administration rather than seeing it as “villainous”." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/20/farage-says-he-wants-to-hijack-trumps-ice-czar-to-help-secure-uk-border

@benroyce@mastodon.social Especially on Facebook and X. A recent study found 90% of Reform UK-supporting accounts on Facebook are fake. The oligarchs and plutocrats want autocratic governments that'll do their bidding, in their own narrow interests...at the expense of everyone else. This is what happens when we let psychopaths gain too much power and influence. Corporate social media is an echo chamber for their malign influence campaigns. The fedi isn't much better, but is at least a significant improvement.

@vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de @Judeau@mas.to @gins@mastodon.gamedev.place @sjvn@mastodon.social Among my areas of interest with playing cards is discrepant moves. Sleights that done smoothly and casually, fly below the radar...but if you did some frame-by-frame video playback, it'd be obvious how they were done. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. You'll never be fooled that way again. A lot of "AI" falls into this category. If a Western domesticated goose can morph into an Asian goose, it's fake. Don't be seduced by illusion; look for the discrepancies.

@Lana@beige.party They're especially terrible at anything that requires aesthetic discernment, creativity or imagination - which is why all Nazis hate the arts - but also terrible at everything else. If you already fervently believe in your own inherent superiority, why would you ever need to self-reflect, or be humble enough to admit ignorance and learn something? Just get rid of the person who made you feel stupid, and replace them with someone more compliant. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@Hex@kolektiva.social A nice idea which unfortunately wouldn't defund the federal government, as it's entirely self-funding through money creation. It isn't a currency user, but the monopoly currency 👉🏼issuer👈🏼 - the source of all money in the first place. Taxes never fund national spending in a country that has its own currency and central bank. If everyone stopped paying taxes the result would not be a government shutdown or sovereign default. It would however almost certainly trigger disastrous hyperinflation.

@PoliceStateUK@mastodon.me.uk @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk This is exactly how I found out they're not reliable. Asking them the same questions in different ways, with different emphases, or asking them loaded or leading questions, can also work to expose the parlour trick - especially if you make sure it's a fresh instantiation each time with no cached chat history.

@Lana@beige.party All it will take is one big player to fold like Lehman Brothers did in 2008, and the whole house of cards will come crashing down. It'll be carnage. At least in 2006/2007, it wasn't 👉🏼irrational👈🏼 to not see the crisis coming. Only a few dozen noted macroeconomists predicted it. But this time there's such a vast misallocation of capital, even Goldman Sachs is talking openly about expenditures being unlikely to generate matching long-term returns. Analysts everywhere are expecting this one.

@box464@mastodon.social Did they consider it a success? I noted that most of its users went very quiet after an initial flurry of activity. I also noted that the reception on the fedi was...mixed, to put it politely. A lot of HOA gatekeeping about conduct that must have driven a lot of them away. (Others here of course made a special effort to welcome them, boost their posts, etc.)

@hoco@sfba.social Indeed. I'm fast approaching 50 years old and still can't fathom why having enough to meet your basic needs, with a comfortable amount left over to fund leisure time, a bit of travel and some hobbies that aren't necessarily profitable, isn't enough for some folks. It's even more incomprehensible to me that having more than it's possible to spend in a lifetime, still isn't enough for some. I don't want to understand either. All I need to know is that these men are destroying the world.

Which company do we think will be the Lehman Brothers of the next global financial crisis? If not a company imploding, which sort of event do we think might trigger the panic that leads to the coming collapse? How's shit gonna go down, in your opinion? Yeah I know these are loaded questions, but I think most of us already agree the meltdown is inevitable and probably imminent! This isn't a thread for having those discussions all over again.

@ArtHarg@mastodon.nl Yep. Same word root from the Old French "trompe", which means a trumpet or horn. 😆

@count_01@mastodon.social Me too compadre, me too. 🫩

@rightsprung@c.im @adwright@mastodon.social The US has discovered this before, of course - it keeps losing wars for this very reason - and is according to its own military officials overstretched and running short on munitions due to the ongoing misadventure in Iran. It simply doesn't have capacity to start new concurrent wars right now; it's just the usual Trumpian bluff and bluster. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@mattsheffield@mastodon.social A friend of mine still believes that widespread lead poisoning led to the collapse of the Roman Empire. I have tried explaining that it can't be true, but he read that one book about it from 1983 and likes the simplicity of the idea. He admittedly does make a compelling argument though - especially after several beers. 😆

@annaf@climatejustice.social @kentishfran@mastodonapp.uk Some of our activists have travelled to Clacton to unofficially campaign for Binface. They're staying in cheap hotels, leafleting and canvassing to convince people that the man behind the bin would genuinely be a better candidate than the charlatan, Farage. 🤭

Community organising is fucking exhausting. It won't stop me but damn, some people are hard work. So you have a better idea, eh? Well then why not just do it and stop complaining? Or carry on sniping from the sidelines. Which do you think would be most helpful? "Someone should do something about that!". Do you really think so little of yourself that you don't realise you ARE the "someone" in this scenario? Or do you always need your arse wiping for you? My politeness reserves are running dry.

@jeff@my0.net I'm so glad you looked it up. 🤣

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Camels, however, know all about the sharks. That's why most of them stay as far away from the sea as possible.

@adwright@mastodon.social @rightsprung@c.im The exact moment that the Paedo-in-Chief realised he could use a national emergency to forestall the mid-term elections was captured on camera, as you probably saw. This is not a man who plays his cards close to his chest; he's an open book, a rube. A total fucking fool. He and his team of sycophantic clowns have quite literally broadcast their plans to the entire world. It's embarrassing. So yeah. I hope Canada is in close backroom talks with its allies.

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social It'll be daylight here, but apparently South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will be filming the impact. We look forward to what promises to be some wild footage! 👀

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social I assume the joke here is that IKEA is much like that, anyway. It's never possible to just walk in, grab what you want, proceed directly to the checkout, pay and leave, is it? You have to negotiate a maze to even find anything. I remember my blood pressure rising every time my ex and I pulled up outside an IKEA, for this reason: the certain knowledge that purchasing X was likely to take most of the afternoon. 😬

@alice@lgbtqia.space Despite my conspicuous lack of boobs, I wouldn't mind trying the boob wash! Sounds like fun. 😂

@benroyce@mastodon.social @mike805@noc.social @ohir@social.vivaldi.net @rootschange@kolektiva.social @scathach@stereophonic.space Tor is still effective combined with other privacy tools such as OTR messaging with forward secrecy. The trouble is most users still don't realise that traffic between the exit node and open internet isn't encrypted by default, so they make stupid mistakes. The point of Tor is that everyone is Spartacus; it doesn't make you invisible! That's a severe limitation of the tech requiring careful planning to mitigate depending on the specific use case.

@Captain_Jack_Sparrow@mastodon.world @jonesmurphy@mastodon.social It has since come to light that Reform has received £24 million from oil, gas and fossil fuel interests. That's about two-thirds of their total income, and the reason for their opposition against net-zero targets.

@mdione@en.osm.town @sundogplanets@mastodon.social It's certainly not perfect - no projection is - but still I love the cleverness of it.

@Lazarou@mastodon.social I mean, he still has socially conservative views on some topics - he fucking hated Jeremy Corbyn! - but I've been in conversations in which he's argued that all the fuss about migrants is a distraction, and that if we don't want refugees coming here then we should stop helping to bomb their counties back to the Stone Age. Coming from a former Nazi I'd say that qualifies as a real change of heart!

@mattblaze@federate.social There's fake cows everywhere around here! You can't move without tripping over one. Mind you I did ingest some rather unusual mushrooms this morning so it may just be me. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@RaymondPierreL3@aus.social I didn't snap, apologies, that was just mild British sarcasm. 😆 Thank you for your help it was appreciated. 🙏🏼

@mloxton@zeroes.ca @samlitzinger@journa.host There's definitely an aspect of right-wingers being unable to learn any lessons from events. They were never doing it wrong, only ever not doing it hard enough. Austerity failing to improve the economy? Clearly we need even more savage and cruel cuts! Stricter immigration policy delivering no discernable benefits, while costing even more in bureaucracy? Clearly we need mass deportation and negative net migration! And so forth...

@RaymondPierreL3@aus.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services Thanks for telling me a bunch of stuff I already know and have also been arguing for years. 👊🏼

@octothorpe@mastodon.online Same. That headline is so clickbaity I don't even want to know what the actual story is!

Yikes, haven't checked this in a while (I'm using Tusky, it doesn't show it unless you click on it). Welcome, bewildering number of new followers! All I can say is that you're in for a wild ride of political commentary, random shitposting, mundane life-based observations, too many boosts, and just generally an idiosyncratic mix of whatever-the-fuck happens to be on this hyperactive mind in the moment. Occasionally, I even post something that matches the bio. #introduction

@ShredderLivesOn@mastodon.scot I've disliked Gervais since before he was internationally famous, so there's zero chance of me watching that tripe. I did vaguely enjoy The Office...until it became clear he was basically satirising himself, and that he really is as shallow, bigoted and generally unpleasant as his David Brent character. It's unwatchable to me now.

@Captain_Jack_Sparrow@mastodon.world @kentishfran@mastodonapp.uk Yeah, there is also the issue of right-wing tabloids and outlets such as GB News only ever reporting on Reform favourably. However these most recent scandals have been so widely covered, it's difficult to believe they haven't seen the headlines. That said, having personally campaigned against Reform, I have come across cult-like, conspiratorial thinking on the doors. As in, people simply refusing to believe Farage isn't the victim of a smear campaign.

@justincox@social.lol @ramsey@phpc.social We've only seen the first season, which we enjoyed enough. Our main criticism was the casting. One of the things that made GoT great was that they picked quirky, charismatic actors who didn't all look like magazines cover material. From the start, HotD looked they just phoned a modelling agency and asked for a bunch of blandly attractive people - and oh, don't worry too much about whether they can act! 😬

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Oceless?

@mattblaze@federate.social @wendinoakland@beige.party In the deprived inner city environment where I grew up, we didn't have "dude" (except in ironic imitation of Americans!), but did have "bro", "mate", "pal", and such like. In person it's a sign you're regarded as a respected equal. But yeah, to strangers online it's often over-familiar and so, as you say, reeks of condescension.

@Lazarou@mastodon.social There's one who effectively lives in our local pub, who is quite open about having been National Front back in the day (yes, he's very old how!). He still has the tattoos. I genuinely think his alcoholism cured his fascism. Hanging out in a family pub almost every evening brings you into contact with a lot of different people. So they do exist. But in my experience it's incredibly rare for those attracted to far-right ideologies to ever change their views.

@JayJustice@blacktwitter.io My favourite cocktail, provided it's made with a little love. Yours looks spot on. 🥰

@randahl@mastodon.social Not only did they not write it, they didn't even proofread it! That's total cognitive surrender. The idea that the chatbot might be fallible didn't even occur to the person who had this printed.

@adaddinsane@mastodonapp.uk #WritersCoffeeClub 8/24. Talk about a time you realised something about a writer through their works. Oh god, this is a deep well. I loved Robert Heinlein so much as a kid, I accumulated almost his complete works. I mean, minus a handful of really obscure ones. I had a paper round and spent all the pay on books. I knew from the start he was a shitty prose writer, but his stories and ideas seemed so cool...until I started to notice the misogyny and racism that suffuses it all. 😬

@jbond@mastodon.social That 48% figure refers to foreign-born lead tenants across the whole of London, not central London specifically. Plus being born outside the UK does not make someone a "foreigner". Roughly 68% of those foreign-born tenants hold a British passport.

@kentishfran@mastodonapp.uk Aren't they still polling disturbingly well despite all the controversy? Unfortunately the sort of people drawn to Reform's right-wing sado-populism don't seem much concerned about corruption. They just want negative net migration. Similar to how MAGA loyalists in the US don't care how corrupt Trump and his administration are, so long as ICE keep terrorising anyone who isn't white.