Imagine living in a place where you could see the stars at night.

That’s the spirit! What fun you must have imagining them all fighting about who’s real…

I do hope that city isn’t called R’lyeh…

They sound like great Gods, and I’ll believe in them even though they don’t exist. Where do we meet up to sing?

Nah, we think you’re on your phone, asleep at the wheel, halfwitted, careless, angry and frustrated and in a hurry.

And you don’t really remember the highway code, because that was some guff you had to study for an exam when you were eighteen. Nobody really drives like that, right?

And you’ve usually been driving for more than an hour so your minds aren’t really on the job.

And you’ve got the music on really high and it keeps distracting you at important moments.

The few drivers who actually are soulless malevolent murderers who enjoy the thought of running over pedestrians and cyclists really make the other 90% look bad though.

A bit like the consensus that most gods don’t exist.

As long as he’s on the road I got no problem with that! A brave man.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve hated and feared cars since I was a boy. But some greenwashing fuckers and their shills in the ‘bike lobby’ legalising riding motorbikes in what used to be safe places has hardly improved matters.

Now there’s nowhere safe to ride a bike or walk, or for children to play.

Fuck cars and fuck motorbikes.

Also, 60 pounds my arse. You might get the odd actual bicycle with a little electric motor attached, but most of them are the same weight and speed as mopeds. And they don’t stay “restricted to 20mph” for long.

I like to drive it at 30 miles an hour on the pavements and footpaths, scattering and scaring pedestrians and children. I am too much of a nancy to ride it on the road where it might be me that gets hurt, but at least I have a plastic hat so I don’t have to pay attention while I’m driving.

Soon no place outside will be safe from hurtling steel, and we will have won.

I am planning to buy an off-roader, so I can get the vermin who try to hide from the traffic in the parks and gardens.

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

Not that that particularly helps…

This, and block the meme subs explicitly.

Thank you for the correction! Where can I find the list of philosophical axioms espoused by the Whigs?

err, no?

Sure, but that’s the only system we know is stable even over the hundred years or so we’ve been doing the experiment.

I would be cautiously in favour of STV, but PR systems seem to get rid of the ‘you can vote the bastards out’ feature in favour of permanent government by the same people in various coalitions.

Being able to change the government without violence is, I think, the only real argument in favour of representative democracy, and it’s an important feature, because it’s what stops democracies having periodic civil wars, and focuses the parties on at least trying to appear to represent the median voter.

So kind! Thank you.

Forgive me, I am editing it in-place as more thoughts occur to me, so do make sure you still agree with it when I stop doing that, and edit your comment appropriately.

I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two and only two parties. Anyone taking a middle position cripples the side they’re closest to.

Before Socialism was a thing, England had ‘Liberals/Whigs’ (what yanks would call libertarians, because they’ve somehow managed to repurpose the word liberal to mean the opposite of what it means) and ‘Conservatives/Tories’ (king and country and church and don’t change things because you’ll break them and hurt people).

And of course, like all political groups do, they hated each other.

The Church of England was once known as the Tory Party at Prayer. The Liberals were the radicals, the party of industry and progress and free markets and who cares who it hurts as long as it’s the future.

With the rise of socialism/fascism/anarchism/progressivism, a truly radical program to rebuild society on utopian lines and use totalitarian terror to enable even more freedom and progress and human happiness, represented in England by the Labour Party, the ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ were squeezed, and combined to oppose socialist thought, which hated them both and wanted to destroy everything they thought was worthwhile in the world.

So there came to pass an uneasy alliance in England between classical liberals and religious loonies, who’d naturally detest each other.

That’s the modern Conservative party, who want to use radical social transformation and the power of the free market to go back to the glorious past, and are very much in favour of freedom of speech and thought as long as it’s the sort of speech and thought that they approve of.

The Liberal Party effectively ceased to exist, because in its radicalism and desire for progress, it was more sympathetic to socialist thought, and so it got crushed.

Socialism has rather collapsed as an idea after an hundred years of practical experience with utopia, leaving Labour as the party of ‘every problem can be solved by stealing more money and spending it on subsidies’. A position which is popular with those who benefit from subsidy, and unpopular with those who get their stuff stolen.

And of course, few of the people in either party actually believe in the causes they publicly espouse. They’re not stupid. But public communications have to be simple-minded and rally tribal support.

Obviously this is a terrible system, but it’s better than regular civil war, which is what you get in all other systems of government.

Seed oilz baaaad!

Oh God, yes! I’m old enough to remember when people thought it was important to have quiet and privacy to think.

I used to love my job. All my life I’ve loved programming, and I used to love being able to solve other people’s problems for them by doing the thing I love.

The open-plan curse killed it for me. For years I’ve done as little paid work as I can get away with because I hate trying to think in an open-plan horror so much. It’s like having my brain in a blender.

I still program, and think, a lot, but I only do it for other people when I need the money.

Wakarimasen, Toronaga-san!

It’s wonderful! There was a terrific BBC TV series when I was a boy which inspired me to read the book, which is even better.

Clavell wrote several other books, all great, but Shogun is the masterpiece.