Chumbawumba original Tubthumper liner notes, continued;

SCAPEGOAT At the height of apartheid there were more black men in British jails than there were in jails in South Africa. Britain’s mucky colonial past lives on, in the mistrust of anybody who isn’t a whiter shade of pale - the State still institutionalises racism knowing that when the Òblack ghettosÓ explode then white society can tell itself that its fear of Òthe otherÓ is justified… +

“There has always been racism. But it developed as a leading principle of thought and perception in the context of colonialism. That’s understandable. When you have your boot on someone’s neck, you have to justify it. The justification has to be their depravity. It’s very striking to see this in the case of people who aren’t very different from one another. Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren’t human. They weren’t like us. We had to crush and destroy them. No. It has to do with conquest, with oppression. If you’re robbing somebody, oppressing them, dictating their lives, it’s a very rare person who can say: “Look, I’m a monster. I’m doing this for my own good.” Even Himmler didn’t say that. A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression, whether it’s throwing them in gas chambers or charging them too much at a corner store, or anything in between. The standard reaction is to say: ‘It’s their depravity. That’s why I’m doing it. Maybe I’m even doing them good.’ If it’s their depravity, there’s got to be something about them that makes them different from me. What’s different about them will be whatever you can find.” Noam Chomsky +

“Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.” Aubrey T. de Vere +

"Detroit was almost as far north as we ever went, but it was still full of crackers and I was always uneasy. One night Chuck Peterson asked me to go with him to a little backstage bar on the corner and have a drink, but I didn’t want to go for the same old reason. But he insisted, and so we did. In a matter of minutes some woman at the bar piped out that she wasn’t going to drink in the place if that nigger stood there, making it clear she meant me. Chuck wanted to answer back, but I talked him out of it and we went on to finish our drink. The next thing we knew a man came over and stared after Chuck. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said. ‘A man can’t bring his wife in a bar any more without you tramp white men bringing a nigger woman in.’ Chuck wouldn’t stand for that, but before he knew it, this guy and a couple more were on him, beating him and kicking him. While everyone else stood around with their mouths open, this guy kept kicking Chuck in the mouth and saying, ‘I’ll fix it so you don’t play trumpet tonight.’ Lady Sings The Blues, Billie Holiday (with William Duff) +

“The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.” Oliver Wendell Holmes +

“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.” Clarence Darrow +

“Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men’s minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out.” Lord Jeffrey +

“Scotland Yard’s Immigration Unit burst into Joy Gardiner’s London flat at 7 am on the 28th July, 1993. They had a deportation order. Joy Gardiner was bound and gagged by the officers. They wrapped 13 feet of surgical tape seven times round Mrs Gardiner’s head. Unsurprisingly, she went into a coma from which she never recovered. The ‘official’ cause of death was suffocation. Mrs Gardiner had overstayed a six month visa and the Home Office wanted her deported back to Jamaica. She had no legal aid present when the immigration unit raided. The Home Office later admitted that the deportation order was timed so that it arrived at her solicitor’s office on the morning of the deportation. They’d deliberately fixed things so that Mrs Gardiner would be caught unawares by the raid. The government refused to launch a public enquiry into Mrs Gardiner’s death. Three officers were charged with ‘unlawfully killing’ Mrs Gardiner; during the trial the judge stressed that: “the case has no political or racial aspect.” On July 12, 1995, almost two years after Mrs Gardiner’s death, the Police Complaints Authority confirmed that the three Met Officers acquitted of ‘Unlawful Killing’ would NOT face disciplinary charges.” Northern Star, 1995

today, more users just means more cost

Not if they’re setting up their own servers. This kind of horizontal growth is the healthiest way to grow a federated network, and something we can do that centralised platforms can’t.

The mod tools are really lackluster currently. And that was a big reason people wanted to leave Reddit

Fair point. The same was said of Mastodon many moons ago. A lot of people put a lot of time and energy into detailed feature requests, describing the problem to be solved, and exactly how their proposed solution would work.

Given that I’ve also seen the same complaint about apps in other federated networks like matrix, maybe what’s needed is a general solution? A website where experienced mods describe the problems they strike, and how social software developers could help them with mod features.

Labour governing alone have been weak tea. We all want a change of government. I’m just hoping enough of the people who want wealth taxes, guaranteed minimum income, and properly funded public services, turn up to vote in sufficient numbers to get the change of government we actually need. Rather than the one that wants to drag the country back to the late 1980s/ early 1990s, like the past few decades never happened…

One of my favourite quick meals is chucking a big potato in the microwave (4 mins each side, give or take), and then topping it with whatever is handy. Eg Baked beans, savoury yeast, spring onions, and unflavoured coconut yoghurt as a sour cream. I usually chuck a quick salad together on the side, but you guys could do mixed frozen veges instead.