Bill Berry
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whimberry.bsky.social
Bill Berry
@whimberry.bsky.social
370 followers 1.2K following 620 posts
Against Everything
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Reposted by Bill Berry
alexclifford.bsky.social
With everything that has come out over the last few days, it’s surely time for British civil society and media to condemn as Farage an anti-Semite

We saw, rightly, the lens turned on the Labour Party. I hope, probably in vein, that equal scrutiny and criticism will now be turned on Farage
snig.bsky.social Snigdha @snig.bsky.social · Oct 1
Nigel Farage has been a lifelong racist. He's been a racist since his school days. David Lammy was forced to apologise for saying Farage flirted with the Hitler Youth - but what do you call it when someone sings Hitler Youth songs? Read Chloe Deakin's letter on Farage's fascism and racism at school.
From Chloe Denkin 01-734 1717 and 1778 E3 ALBANY PICCADILLY WIV ORH 4th June 1981 Dear Master, I am happy to say that I am not acquainted with N. P. Farage, of ASRY happy, because judging from hereporis i haveter ceived he is not someone with whom I would wish to be acquainted; and becaure I am, therefore, able to write on the ground of no personal prejedice, but on that conceraing p. inciple. You will recati that at the recent, and longthy, moeting about the selection of prefects, the nomads by a hegy that Sara was "a fascist, but that was no reason why ho would not make a good prefect" invoked considerable reaction from members of the Common Room. Another collesgue, who teaches the boy, des-cribed his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he citod a particular inciler in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This mastor stated his view that that behaviour was precisely why the boy should not he made a prefect. Yet another colleague deseribed how, at a CCE camp organized by the College, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shout-in Hitler-you songs; and when it was suggested by a master thie boys who expressed such views "don't really mean them", the College Chaplain himself commented that, on the contrary, in his experience views of that kind expressed by boys of that age are onted, and are mennt, At the end of that meeting I had not a scintilla of doubt that after the facts disclosed to you, Farage's nomination would no longer be considered. Nor, I imagine, had my colleagues; other-wise, we would have expressed ourselves even more strongly. But yesterday I was told by a senior boy, in terms of st that Farage was indeed to be selected; and today, of course, his appointment was announced in Assembly an announcement, I gather, which was met with disbelief and derision. To say that is too late to reverse this decision, or that Farage', acdir 3 will be restricted to particular areas of College te, or that he will be supervised within them, is futile. His appointment will have four immediate consequences. First, it will vastly increase his own confidence, and sense of self-justification. Secondly, he will have the privilege of listing his appointment as a profect at Dulwich College in his uni-versity and other applications. Thirdly, his peers, according to their own views, will either adopt him as an exemplar, or, as is much more likely, regard his appointment with disillusionment and cynicism when Ley observe that his notorious views and behaviour, well known to poth Master and members of the staff, are, as it would aptent, condoned by them. Fourthly, those members of the Common Room, such as myself, who believed that a firm daca fon had been reached through a democratic process, will be shock, saddened, angered, and disheartened. You will appreciate that I regard this as a very serious matter. i have often heard you tell our senior boys that they are the nation's future leaders. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that these lenders are enlightened and compassionate. As you know, the national and educational press has recently given much prominence to the growing concern at the exploitation of school pupils by extremists of all kinds. A school of the stature and high roputation of Dulwich College which openly con-domned the recent troubles in Brixton, and offered its facilities freely to the foreca of law and order, ought not to be seen laside or outside its confines to be giving its endorsement, expressly or by implication, to budding extremists of the opposite kind. A school which is proud of its selectiveness, conservatism, and discipline, cught not to allow these characteristics to degen erate into intolerance, political extremism, or bullying of the nastiest kind, in its pupils. The matter of the appointment of Farage as a prefect may be thought by some to be minuscule against these deep considerations. It is not so. I am by disposition, tolerant; and in politics, moderate. But as a member of the Common Room, I find it distasteful that a boy such as Farage should have bestowed upon him the prestige of office and authority: wore I a parent or a pupil, I would find it profoundly so. In view, as I am aware, of the wide concern within the College about this matter, I am sending a copy of this letter to the chairman of the Common Room. Yours very sincerely, David Emms, Esq., MA, The Master of Dulwich College.
November 26, 2025 at 8:09 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
As Photoshop did to the photo, so is GenAI doing to the video. The camera never lies? I think you'll find it can. Technologies of fakery can authorise us to believe a great many things, but to disbelieve even more.
matthewfacciani.bsky.social Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · 7h
Some political influencers will dismiss an inconvenient video by calling it a deepfake, and many of their followers believe them. Even if corrected later, far fewer people ever see that update. So now we face two problems: people weaponizing AI deepfakes, and weaponizing false claims of deepfakes.
November 26, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Bill Berry
ottoenglish.bsky.social
Farage really on the ropes there.
bestforbritain.org Best for Britain @bestforbritain.org · 2d
Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

It was years ago.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not in a hurtful way.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not with intent.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not genuine abuse.

😮🫣😬😱 ~AA
November 24, 2025 at 10:09 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
The Case of Comrade Tulayev directed by the Coen brothers featuring Jesse Plemons as Stalin
benjaminkabak.com Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com · 1d
If you were a despotic president, what movie would you force Hollywood to make? I want to see Quentin's Star Trek movie or maybe Kill Bill Vol 3.
November 26, 2025 at 12:16 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
Sadie Sink as Kirsten, Keanu Reeves as both Arthur and Dr. Eleven in @lillywachowski.bsky.social's Station Eleven. With Michelle Pfeiffer as Miranda, Kali Penn as Keevan and Hugh Laurie as Clark.
benjaminkabak.com Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com · 1d
If you were a despotic president, what movie would you force Hollywood to make? I want to see Quentin's Star Trek movie or maybe Kill Bill Vol 3.
November 26, 2025 at 9:44 AM
whimberry.bsky.social
Torn between @realgdt.bsky.social and @rianjohnson.bsky.social to direct @ursulakleguin.com 's The Wizard of Earthsea. Gontish characters dark-skinned as in book, with Northern (English) accents.
benjaminkabak.com Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com · 1d
If you were a despotic president, what movie would you force Hollywood to make? I want to see Quentin's Star Trek movie or maybe Kill Bill Vol 3.
November 26, 2025 at 9:22 AM
whimberry.bsky.social
I say a trainload... the bus hasn't come and most have now given up and gone home or got Ubers and Taxis. The public transport infrastructure in Manchester remains woefully inadequate, Bee logos notwithstanding.
whimberry.bsky.social Bill Berry @whimberry.bsky.social · 13h
Take it from me at a freezing bus stop with a cancelled trainload of people, Delay Repay doesn't help most commuters. Regular commuters will be on season tickets, so no receipt for this journey. And those of us on hourly rates etc will be more worried about loss of earnings than ticket cost.
November 26, 2025 at 8:15 AM
whimberry.bsky.social
Take it from me at a freezing bus stop with a cancelled trainload of people, Delay Repay doesn't help most commuters. Regular commuters will be on season tickets, so no receipt for this journey. And those of us on hourly rates etc will be more worried about loss of earnings than ticket cost.
November 26, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Bill Berry
jorisbinned.bsky.social
Fantastic(ally depressing) article and this rather sums it all up
November 26, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Reposted by Bill Berry
barristersecret.bsky.social
Imagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Jury trials could be scrapped except in most serious cases
Only cases of alleged murder, rape or manslaughter will be decided by a jury under new proposals to cut court backlogs.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 25, 2025 at 4:04 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
"The giant meteor heading straight for us isn't everything. Some of you have giant meteor tunnel vision."
benbarclay.bsky.social Ben Barclay @benbarclay.bsky.social · 2d
“Climate change isn’t everything“ is becoming a go-to justification for delaying action.

This is - deliberately or inadvertently - a misframing of the issue. The point isn’t CC is everything, it’s that it’s essential to deal with.

1/
November 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
On why sticking this logo on plastic packaging has to be in the top 5 greatest filthy lies in human history.
The recycling logo, three arrows forming a closed circle
November 24, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Reposted by Bill Berry
dov.bsky.social
As a Lithuanian I do not understand these attitudes at all tbh. When we regained our independence, there were quite a few statues we promptly destroyed. When Syrians overthrew Assad, they knocked down his statues. Why is knocking statues down or altering them purportedly in itself bad?
eicathomefinn.bsky.social Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d
'Responding to the decision, Devine, 80, said: “In principle I am opposed to changing historic artefacts to suit ­today’s tastes. To do so is presentism, imposing 20th-century values on those of the distant past.'

'20th-century'? Bit of an own goal Sir T.
Historian attacks ‘ludicrous’ changes to statues with slavery links
Professor Sir Tom Devine, an emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, said he was opposed to changing artefacts to suit modern sensibilities
www.thetimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:51 AM
whimberry.bsky.social
"Conspiracy theories are in some sense the secularization of final causes" is a great insight. Again regretting never having read Spinoza.
November 23, 2025 at 7:08 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
Sniper tourism. Human safari. If you portrayed the rich doing this in a work of fiction, people would think it was a bit on the nose. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Italy probes claim that tourists paid to go to Bosnia to kill besieged civilians
Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to fire at Bosnians risking their lives in besieged Sarajevo.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
Rot’, Scanlan argues, existed not simply in the diseased potato crop but in imperial capitalism: ‘the crisis ... was the system.’
lrb.co.uk London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 3d
‘There is no doubt that food was available in Ireland throughout the crisis – just not to those who needed it most.’

Niamh Gallagher on a new history of the Great Famine.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Niamh Gallagher · Carrion and Earth: Ireland’s Great Famine
Although Ireland had endured earlier famines – including one in the 1740s that, proportionally, claimed more lives...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 23, 2025 at 2:04 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
A powerful essay with insights into how the ruling class coheres, as revealed by the Epstein emails. But really, the Theresa May quote sticks in the throat. Let's not let our revulsion for the "Epstein Class", globally mobile as they may be, turn into a laundering of May's xenophobic nationalism.
davidho.bsky.social David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 3d
“…there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good.” 🔥
Opinion | How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Bill Berry
abstracttruth.bsky.social
Anyone remember that cease fire?

"Gaza hospitals running out of supplies as airstrikes continue"
Gaza hospitals running out of supplies as airstrikes continue, medics say
‘Severe lack’ in territory where Israeli strikes have killed more than 50 people and injured over 100 in recent days
www.theguardian.com
November 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Bill Berry
gregk.co.uk
Rolling out the Matt Christman quote from after Charlottesville (2017) again:
And that's what these guys are, these guys that marched in Charlottesville, these are the people who are aware of the unspoken premise of this sort of zombie neoliberalism that we're living in, which is that we're coming to a point where there's gonna be ecological catastrophe, and that it's gonna require either massive redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of the first world, or genocide. And these are the first people who have basically said, "Well if that's the choice, then I choose genocide", ", and they're getting everyone else ready, intellectually and emotionally, for why that's gonna be okay when it happens, why they're not really people. When we're putting all this money into more fucking walls and drones and bombs and guns to keep them away, so that we can watch them die with clear consciences, it's because we've been loaded with the ideology that these guys are now starting to express publicly.
November 21, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Bill Berry
louisathelast.bsky.social
If you give me a smart home device as a gift you should know I am going to hit it with a hammer
November 22, 2025 at 7:31 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
This is a really good point. Extrapolating from the conditions of the mid 20th century takes you nowhere real. And billionaires trying to "re"-enact and realise Golden Age sci-fi will take us nowhere good.
asherelbein.bsky.social Asher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 6d
New, on Heat Death! Thrilled to run this absolute banger from @goldwagnathan.bsky.social, on the bizarre way that concepts from 20th century Golden Age sci-fi have lingered in the scientific imagination, despite never coming within spitting distance of becoming — what's the word? — real
The Fatal Allure of Yesterday's Tomorrows
On the dangers of seeing science fiction as a template for the future.
heat-death.ghost.io
November 21, 2025 at 12:20 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
I often think of the Manchester workers who rallied against slavery during the cotton famine, whenever the sensibles moan that, say, Palestine solidarity or trans liberation, are a distraction from "working class issues". There's no greater insult to the working class and its political subjectivity.
asherelbein.bsky.social Asher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 13d
In 1862, @saulelbein.bsky.social writes, suffering textile workers streamed into a Manchester meeting hall. At stake: whether Britain should join the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. Proponents of "kitchen table politics" can learn a lot from what happened next.

New, on Heat Death!
Lions at the Kitchen Table
Saul considers the Lancashire Cotton Famine, political mythmaking and the cynical trap of "affordability"
heat-death.ghost.io
November 20, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Bill Berry
resolutereader.bsky.social
Statement from Manchester @CJ_Coalition
following far-right attack on the #COP30 Climate Justice march in Manchester last Saturday. We are determined to continue to fight against racism, fascism and environmental destruction. t.co/g4FYjecjjy
https://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/blog/greater-manchester-campaigners-join-millions-globally-to-call-for-climate-justice-as-far-right-thugs-attack-child-led-march/
t.co
November 19, 2025 at 2:19 PM
whimberry.bsky.social
You can't really look at Farage without seeing the school bully. Well, his classmates remember, that's exactly what he was.
theguardian.com The Guardian @theguardian.com · 7d
‘He used to say things like “Hitler was right”’: Farage faces more allegations of racist behaviour at school
‘He used to say things like “Hitler was right”’: Farage faces more allegations of racist behaviour at school
A former friend and others who were at Dulwich college with the now Reform UK leader speak of his behaviour * ‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school It had been a fun sleep-over at Nigel Farage’s house and Jean-Pierre Lihou, a teenager with an appetite, was delighted with his schoolfriend’s mother’s hospitality. “I remember the fantastic cooked English breakfast, as opposed to what you get at a boarding house on a morning,” Lihou recalled. “I was a boarder and he was a day boy,” he said of their education at Dulwich college in south-east London. Farage was a great mimic, and funny with it, Lihou said. But, over time, he found that there was a darker side to his 14-year-old friend. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
November 20, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Bill Berry
joolia.bsky.social
the nuzzi story is fun and all but at the center of it is the elevation of a man who has dedicated his life to making children catch preventable diseases to a position where he can enact harm at enormous scale
ddiamond.bsky.social Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 6d
CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”
Autism and Vaccines QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS PAGE 2 OF 9 | ALL PAGES J For Everyone NOV. 19, 2025 KEY POINTS • The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. • Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities. HHS Research on Plausible Biologic Mechanisms between Vaccines and Autism HHS will evaluate plausible biologic mechanisms between early childhood vaccinations and autism. Mechanisms for further investigation include the impacts of aluminum adjuvants, risks for certain children with mitochondrial disorders, harms of neuroinflammation, and more. * The header "Vaccines do not cause autism" has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.
November 20, 2025 at 3:19 AM