Replying to
@GetCarter@mastodonapp.uk
There is a suggestion in the comments section of this video that the #CountBinface Party be renamed 'Refuse'.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/116776847428636964
#UKPolitics
Remote
JdeBP
@JdeBP@mastodon.scot
mastodon 4.7.2This account encompasses politics.
For general, non-politics, stuff see @JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk. For #senryu and #SlowLife tasks, see @JdeBP@toot.wales.
For the command-line and system tools (including #nosh and #djbwares), specifically, see @JdeBP@tty0.social.
69 Followers
9 Following
50 Posts
Joined December 19, 2022
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Replying to
@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social @Sobex@social.sciences.re @theeclecticdyslexic@mstdn.social
Amusingly, #CountBinface would then have outdone #NigelFarage twice. Farage once ran against Bercow, and lost.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/116880503058147802
In reality, Binface will likely lose. But that will have still undermined and damaged Farage, especially in the eyes of Farage's own supporters and donors.
'You called, and spent our money on, a by-election against a dustbin, Nige?'
#UKPolitics
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
If anyone wants more confirmation other than PasteBin, here's the Irish Independent's article on this, from yesterday.
https://independent.ie/irish-news/government-td-reports-x-to-gardai-under-child-sex-abuse-laws-over-grok-ai-images/a45604064.html
The Independent has been covering this quite a lot over recent days, and Barry Ward is not the only TD to speak up about this. Here's Niamh Smyth from the day before.
https://independent.ie/irish-news/elon-musks-x-is-trying-to-let-grok-off-the-hook-for-nudification-app-says-minister/a1109922538.html
Here's a Gardai rep speaking to an Oirechtas committee on the 14th.
https://independent.ie/irish-news/gardai-probing-200-images-relating-to-grok-ai-tool-amid-nudification-scandal-committee-hears/a1501424291.html
#Grok #BarryWard #IrishPolitics #Twitter #Garda
What are the shortest odds that @CountBinface@mastodon.world has ever been given to win an election?
Because if they weren't 5/1 before, they are now. William Hill. Down from 9/1 a few hours ago.
They might have shortened even further between the time that I write this and when people wake up and read it. (-:
#ClactonOnSea #CountBinface
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
2026-01-23 is the day of the #MinnesotaGeneralStrike, which (apparently to avoid the barmy stigma that U.S.A. people attach to the word 'strike') they are calling a 'Day of Truth and Freedom'.
It has been called in response to the death of #ReneeGood and the general military and paramilitary violence in the U.S.A. over the past few months.
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/ice-protest-faith-union-and-community-leaders-call-for-one-day-economic-blackout
The #Minnesota Star Tribune and FOX9 have failed so far to report this. But CBS has it.
#NoKings #NeverAgain #fascism #MIRAC
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
They're not far off, either.
I just turned up this. Apparently, 4 people joined The Metro's reviewer on opening night, plus an additional 1 who was apparently another movie reviewer.
So a third of the audience was people who were being paid to watch the movie. (-:
https://metro.co.uk/2026/01/30/sat-a-near-empty-cinema-melania-thought-26612808/
Amusing coincidence: Kimberly Bond also writes features for Cosmo.
@GetCarter@mastodonapp.uk#Melania #MelaniaTrump #USMovies #Amazon #TheMetro
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to
@fgbjr@indieweb.social#ReformUKLtd won't touch #LizTruss with a barge pole.
#NigelFarage has already gone out of his way to avoid being photographed with her at events that they have both attended.
And this despite Truss having money to pay. She has a well-financed social media operation and is touring the U.S.A. claiming that she will spearhead an English version of MAGA.
Reform U.K. Ltd has nonetheless clearly drawn the line at letting her in.
@cstross@wandering.shop @militant_dilettante@mastodon.social
Replying to
@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange#CountBinface declared candidacy at 15:19 BST yesterday. The last remaining major party, the #GreenParty, withdrew at just after 21:00 BST.
See reason 1 and update.
It's Binface, #NigelFarage, an attendant chorus of Monster Raving Loonies, and a couple of the (to use a Binface joke) 'named after what we used to do to floppy discs in the 1990s' parties (Reclaim and Rejoin).
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/116880480362431263
@mathzy@mastodon.green#ClactonOnSea #UKPolitics
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
The review in @GetCarter@mastodonapp.uk 's thread is one of those recycled quotes that actually comes from elsewhere according to Snopes; but lower in the thread people have suggested that the ticket sales for these places can be accounted for *entirely* by the news/magazine movie reviewers who did not have advance screenings.
https://mastodonapp.uk/@GetCarter/115982369126621417
#Melania #MelaniaTrump #USMovies #VueCinema #Islington #Amazon
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to on kolektiva.social
@arrrg@kolektiva.social
I too was concerned for their wellbeing afterwards.
And they don't have the option of doing what that lady who left after 20 minutes did.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/115983497912180622
The Daily Record reported a total of 16 tickets sold in Edinburgh and Glasgow as of this morning. ABC reported 50 pre-booked tickets across the whole of Australia for opening day.
https://dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/melania-trump-documentary-sells-just-36641836
https://abc.net.au/news/2026-01-31/melania-trump-movie-and-why-we-might-need-to-follow-the-money/106285248
@cstross@wandering.shop#Melania #MelaniaTrump #USMovies
Replying to
@Cassandra@ottawa.place
If you liked that, go and see Daisy Cooper MP asking a question at PMQs last Wednesday.
Xe wanted to make a joke about #NigelFarage's old 'Leave means leave.' slogan.
Xe got as far as 'The Honourable Member for Clacton' before being interrupted by calls of 'There isn't one!'.
Then David Lammy had a go.
https://clactonandfrintongazette.co.uk/news/26263107.clacton-voters-must-facts-mps-say-pmqs/
It's better if you can find a video of it.
@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social#UKPolitics #ReformUKLtd #ClactonOnSea
I suspect that @ianbetteridge@social.vivaldi.net will be slightly conflicted about this one, especially as the methodology involved asking 'AI' for the answer, and it came back mostly 'No.' in the body of the piece.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792218
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791799
https://economist.com/interactive/finance-and-economics/2026/07/02/is-the-economist-always-wrong
It's worth noting that the print edition did not use this question headline at all for this piece, but went for a pun instead.
#TheEconomist #QuestionHeadlines #AI
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
Not the specific claim, but there is news coverage claiming that opposition to U.S.A. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is being suppressed on #TikTok.
Standard caution about question headlines applies, of course.
https://forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/01/26/are-new-owners-censoring-tiktok-top-democrats-influencers-celebrities-raising-concerns/
https://cosmopolitan.com/politics/a70144099/tiktok-ice-censorship/
But let's put it this way: the notion has reached Forbes and Cosmo, and isn't just some anonymous poster on Twitter stirring the pot.
#USPolitics #fascism
Replying to
@ReggieHere @TJ1001
By the way: Someone should use the Twitter geolocation feature on that account, to find out if it is yet another 'British' account being run by the scammer operations in India and Bangladesh.
#Twitter
Replying to
@JugglingWithEggs@mstdn.social
Lest we forget, there was also a time more recently when #NigelFarage ran against someone else who was accused by opponents of having some dodgy dealings with a house.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/116880503058147802
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It certainly tracks too that the Trump Court wants to stamp down on, in their very own words, 'anti-Fascist' groups.
#USPolitics #DonaldJTrump #SebastianGorka
Boosted by @gvenema@fairmove.net
I read the MOU between #Iran and the U.S.A. re the #TrumpWar.
The rumours are true. Iran is going to get $300billions, and the U.S.A. is going to ensure that this is legal by removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's status under #USLaw as a foreign terrorist organization.
FTO status was assigned in April 2019 by one #DonaldJTrump, and reaffirmed by Trump in February 2025. It's illegal to pay even $1 to a FTO under 18 USC § 2339B.
https://law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339B
https://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/national-security-presidential-memorandum-nspm-2/
Replying to
@matlag
Not in Ireland only, for the record. Amongst the Irish Independent's coverage of this. that I mentioned elsethread, here's a PA report about Indonesia's and Malaysia's reactions to #Grok that it published on the 12th.
https://independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/malaysia-and-indonesia-become-first-countries-to-block-elon-musks-grok-over-explicit-ai-images-as-uk-regulator-launches-investigation/a655651340.html
@cstross#Twitter #IrishPolitics #IndonesianPolitics #MalaysianPolitics
Replying to
@ianbetteridge
Khan will be instituting canon law and ecclesiastical courts next. You mark my words.
https://legislation.gov.uk/aep/Cha2st1/13/12/contents/enacted
#UKLaw #ChurchOfEngland #history #CanonLaw
I really dislike using 'TACO' here. It's a poor show that this has caught on as the name for this. Not bombing a nuclear power plant should not be regarded as 'chickening out'.
It is not cowardice. It is refraining from performing an evil act, one that should not have been decided to do in the first place.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
Guillotines might. Missing from the social media discussion of these is that this only happened to young sea slugs. Older ones just died after some days, and did not regenerate their bodies.
https://sciencefocus.com/news/solar-powered-sea-slugs-are-able-detach-their-heads-and-regenerate-a-whole-new-body-within-weeks
So the middle-aged sea slug oligarch/monarch, sitting all green on xyr emerald seaweed throne, is not as safe from the French Revolution as xe might think.
I suppose that now you have an excuse to use '#kleptoplasty' and '#autotomy' in a story. (-:
#SeaSlugs
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It's peace prizes, belligerence, gunboat diplomacy, and invasions on the crazy monarch calendar, today. Secret police, disappearances, murder, and breakdown of the rule of law was yesterday. They might return later in the week.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/115921003477397814
#DonaldJTrump #MonarchistParty #USPolitics #Greenland #FIFAPeacePrize #NATO
Replying to
@claudemp @Wen
More of the amusing things are that (a) the four kings all have a picture of #DonaldJTrump, and (b) none of the games is being played legally.
There are 5 cards, not 4, in a poker hand; that's not actually a checkmate on the chess board, and there seems to be too many/few of various pieces; and there are 3 throws in a darts round, not 6.
#TrumpWar #FIFAWorldWar
Replying to
@radarskiy
Your Jedi mind tricks won't work on @cstross , who has never even seen Rebo and Zooty.
Anyway, we haven't even had the vice-president become #PresidentVance, yet. Although we do know where to find Nightwatch now.
#Babylon5
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It might be about to kick off for a different reason.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/115892467098565720
Combine that with the MAGA divisions over #DonaldJTrump's cover-up of Eppstein, the oil industry declining to deliver the promised $100B to #Venezuela, the only postponed economic effects of the #TrumpTarrifs, and #BoycottWorldCup.
#USPolitics
Replying to
@markdennehy
We've really got to think of a better name for it than that.
Otherwise it's risking #NuclearWar as the result of a person who writes in all-caps on social media from the toilet having the same problem with being called 'chicken' as Marty McFly.
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/116278790863761105
@cstross#FIFAWorldWar #TrumpWar
Replying to
@peachfront@toot.community @cstross@wandering.shop
According to the paper:
The people did not read the books. They fed the books (and others) to a computer system in order to construct an LLM that spat out potted summaries (in the forms of questions and answers) of specific plot points (involving AI) in the stories.
The paper states that the LLM sometimes went wrong, giving its condensed form of a Terminator plot point as one example.
#GitHub #USLaw #LLMs #Google #PrincetonUniversity #Microsoft #SciFi #SkyNet
Replying to
@diazona @cstross
I agree. It is the so-called 'Sci-Fi Benchmark' LLM dataset that, as the paper explicitly says (on pages 96 and 97), is based upon two of Charlie Stross's works. And that's being published on GitHub. Thus, Microsoft.
Not legal advice M. Stross, but one avenue to point your solicitor towards exploring.
@peachfront#GitHub #USLaw #LLMs #Google #PrincetonUniversity #Microsoft
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It is indeed a thing, you'll be interested to learn, or at least a meme of about 3 years's standing. The Wikipedia article was created in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Friday
It's interesting how it has (and has not) spread to non-U.S.A. parts of the FediVerse.
If memory serves (I've since deleted it off the TiVo.), it was on this week's episode of QI. So it might do the rounds in the U.K. a bit more, this year.
#BrownFriday
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
Out of curiosity, I just checked.
The place to go on the #FediVerse for #BrownFriday plumber posts is Mastodon.Social.
Both MastodonApp.UK and Mastodon.Scot have had the hashtag since 2023, but only MastodonApp.UK has pulled the Mastodon.Social posts.
Toot.Wales, SFBA.Social, Mstdn.Social, and Mstdn.CA all have the same 1 BlueSky #BrownFriday post, from yesterday; and Mastodon.London and Glasgow.Social have not yet had any posts with that hashtag at all.
(-:
#brown #QI #FediTips
Replying to
@lindasgoluppiart
The world's prior experience in this area is with the likes of #FerdinandMarcos and #ImeldaMarcos. Although Imelda claimed to have been reduced to pauperhood at one point, by no reasonable standard was that true.
And xe had the same level of fanatical popular support despite everything that #DonaldJTrump has. As well as the #EdificeComplex.
The Marcos model seems likely to be followed here, the one possible fly in the ointment being #PresidentVance.
#USPolitics #shoes
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
Unfortunately, Robert F. Astaroth Jr, Prince of Health and Human Services, has taken one of the demon names.
JD Beliar?
@etchedpixels@mastodon.social#demonology #PresidentVance #RobertFKennedyJr
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
The laws of physics of this Post-Stross Universe hold. You still talked about a future better than reality turned out to be, where a #FIFAPeacePrize awardee started a war 28 days later.
Although the universe taking less than 6 hours to hit below your mark must be something of a record.
#Venezuela #USPolitics #PeteHegseth
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/115776208271482130
Replying to
@snaefell
Let me welcome you to the #PresidentVance hashtag, that has been quietly sitting and waiting since 2024. (-:
https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/113506867140999415
I made some predictions back then, and reality has yet to rule them out.
@cstross
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
To save everyone else the work, I've located the original. It's from Adobe Stock, by someone known only as "dantada", and tagged 2006, which is presumably the year when it was taken.
https://stock.adobe.com/images/new-york-spring-street-manhattan-508749781/508749781
Amusingly, the stock image is a fair way down the #NewYorkPost article. The generated montage has skipped over some images of already pedestrianized school roads, 14th Street buses, and suchlike.
@vwestlife@mastodon.social#NewYorkCity #Manhattan #SpringStreet #ambulance
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It's a stock image, a 'retouched' 'simulation', from 2014.
https://istockphoto.com/photo/step-inside-your-dream-home-gm528556505-54130428
@weirdestate@eigenmagic.net#StockImages
Replying to
@GetCarter@mastodonapp.uk
I think that you'll enjoy #CountBinface's own observation in another interview from that night about what we used to do to floppy discs in the 1990s.
https://youtube.com/v/l5W1OQJj0xk
#UKPolitics #ReformUKLtd #RestoreBritainLtd
Replying to
@bobdvb@mastodonapp.uk
Yes, indeed.
https://ft.com/content/08eb1b45-91c2-4312-9d3c-ac5e4e557278
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_833
El reads these things so we don't have to. (-:
The slight caveat is that the #HouseOfEl thumbnails and titles have a tendency to use the present tense for things that haven't quite happened yet.
#EUPolitics #DigitalSovereignty
Replying to on wandering.shop
@cstross@wandering.shop
What's confusing is that the original training advertisement (going by the text in the image) does not have this image or anything like it.
https://www.azubiyo.de/ausbildung/dornstadt/?job=a5624e52
#azubiyo #Dornstadt #AIs #LLMs #AIslop
Replying to
@bytebro@mastodonapp.uk
I just read a U.S.A. person in another timeline telling the world that 'all freedom of expression and free access to information in the UK' is being banned, because a porn company dislikes the restrictions on porn.
I really wanted to tell the po-faced idiot that the restrictions on porn match what we've had in newsagents and sex shops for decades; whereas the people who *actually* want our freedoms are the parties with the strong ties to the Trumpanzees, openly going after the #ECHR.
I thought that #ElonMusk causing 14 millions deaths was yet another piece of social media bullshit, propagated via the usual nonsense of anonymous sourceless screenshots.
It isn't. It's a study in next month's #TheLancet, a collaboration between Brazilian & Spanish universities.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01186-9
It does not include other Department of Dodgy life-affecting consequences such as cuts to aviation safety at the FAA, NOAA cuts, cuts at the NIH, and others.
#USPolitics #DOGE #TrumpDeaths
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
I think that the Argument From U.S.A. Prohibition about banning things is over-used. What happened in the U.S.A. was unique to alcohol, the religious and temperance movements of the 19th century U.S.A., and the socioeconomic shifts of the time. It does not generalize to every drug, nor to all countries.
One of the more ironic of the many differences is that the weight of the #WorldHealthOrganization is behind controlling #tobacco.
https://fctc.who.int/protocol
#USPolitics #history
Replying to
@GetCarter@mastodonapp.uk
That one about the hand dryer in the gent's toilet dates back to when the Count stood against Johnson in #Uxbridge in 2019.
https://indy100.com/news/general-election-count-binface-boris-johnson-brexit-9243176
Xe did a line at one point recently about how the BBC actually did let xem bring back #Ceefax for a day, but only on radio. I looked it up. #BBCRadio4 actually did, on Christmas Day 2024.
https://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00268v4
Utterly amazing that Sky News's senior political correspondent Jon Craig had no clue.
#CountBinface #UKPolitics
Replying to
@ArabellaLovejoy
Even #Canada's reaction was underreported. Non-Canadian news organizations, apart from a few dedicated politics ones, didn't mention it, as far as I can see.
https://thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/carney-reiterates-call-to-respect-international-law-as-trump-threatens-civilization/article_a2218b63-f228-566c-807c-3403bc4f0ad7.html
The big news, it seems, is that U.S.A. people who a few years ago would never have gainsaid #DonaldJTrump are now doing so publicly and often.
I wonder whether #PamBondi got rung up by a journalist for an opinion.
@lindasgoluppiart @JackTheCat#TrumpWar #FIFAWorldWar
Replying to
Replying to
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop
It's not the past 72 hours, though.
There's a very quiet out-of-the-way node (even quieter than Glasgow.Social) where I have an account for a limited specialized purpose.
For the past month or so I've been reporting war propaganda accounts continually springing up in its local timeline, all of which are set up with (hidden) followed/follower webs for getting them visible off-node.
They've just decided that your account is useful as a follow target this week.