Paul
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xcivxciv.bsky.social
Paul
@xcivxciv.bsky.social
Internetter since '94, sarcastic, IT, technology, photography, DIY/maker.

🇬🇧 London and Kent, England.
Reposted by Paul
what i love is that in 1990 judas priest got brought to trial over the claim that subliminal messages in the recording "better by you better than me" caused two suicides and now in 2025 openai seems to be generating a suicide a week with its superliminal messages and the US government is funding it
November 27, 2025 at 8:23 AM
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The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.
November 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
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The owner of Facebook and Instagram has revealed in internal documents (exposed by Reuters) that around 10 per cent of its annual revenue comes from advertising placed by fraudsters.
November 27, 2025 at 10:10 PM
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The "don't have an extra kid if you can't afford it" brigade get awfully upset when you suggest they don't stay in their £2m house if they can't afford it, don't they?
November 27, 2025 at 6:09 PM
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🚨🚨OBR: We expect UK & global trade intensity to fall in the coming years, as a result of the recent resurgence in global protectionism on top of the enduring effects of #Brexit. We have not changed our assessment that Brexit will reduce the level of UK productivity by around 4 % after 15 years.
November 26, 2025 at 4:49 PM
WHYYYYYY

Why does the molly coddling of older folk continue!
Cash ISA limit cut to £12,000 as expected - though only for under 65s! A new bias in the tax system towards pensioners is introduced....
November 26, 2025 at 1:00 PM
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Taking the long view, thank goodness the Tories took those hard decisions after the financial crisis, huh
November 26, 2025 at 12:56 PM
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7 x 3000+ students + 17 smaller institutions must mean 30,000+ affected students. That’s about the same size as Sheffield uni, which employs 8000ish staff. Why is the government tolerating the impending collapse of up to 24 related employers and 8000+ more lost jobs? Where is the sense of crisis?
Chief exec of OfS 'said the OfS believes there are 24 institutions at risk of exiting the market in the next 12 months, seven of which are large providers with more than 3,000 students. There are another 25 or so institutions of various sizes at risk over a two- to three-year period, she added.'
Seven ‘large providers’ at risk of going under in the next year
Skills minister says no higher education institutions are at imminent risk of collapse this year but OfS confirms more than 20 providers are being closely monitored
www.timeshighereducation.com
November 26, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Over the last 25 years the public have got a good sense of how the police actually work.

(my personal experience from jury service in 2000 was that they are both incompetent + prejudiced)

Now we are told that we can dispense with juries and everything will be fine.

@davidallengreen.bsky.social
November 26, 2025 at 8:44 AM
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In essence: juries are important for what decisions they prevent others from making.
Juries are not perfect.

Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.

But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.

They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.
November 25, 2025 at 9:52 PM
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You have to keep giving money to avoid collapse and if there’s collapse you have to give more money. It’s called the free market.
November 24, 2025 at 10:54 PM
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There is something wrong about public procurement.
November 24, 2025 at 8:18 AM
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Elon Musk donated $277 million to Trump so he could steal the federal government’s data, dismantle the nation’s infrastructure, and stop foreign aid from going to nonwhite people. It’s a quid pro quo breathtaking in scope, corruption, and damage, & completely unprecedented in American history.
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 3:29 PM
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“Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.”
Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege - The Economic Times
Meta reportedly halted internal research into the mental health impacts of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence of harm. Internal documents revealed users reported lower depression and...
m.economictimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:46 PM
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November 23, 2025 at 9:42 AM
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Buying #Christmas cards or presents?

Shop with small independents (like me) instead of the big high street names.
www.gailmyerscough.co.uk

Are you a small business? Reply with your link. Let's support each other this Christmas.
November 21, 2025 at 7:32 PM
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X has changed their policy and now you can see where the accounts are based.

Here’s an “influencer from Texas”
November 21, 2025 at 6:36 PM
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Reminder:

SDNY "was running an active investigation into Jeffrey Epstein[’s] ... coconspirators. In January [2025], SDNY prosecutors were ordered to transfer the Epstein case files to DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C. ... the investigation into co-conspirators has inexplicably ceased."
November 21, 2025 at 5:13 PM
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Honestly though imagine saying to your grandad who landed at Normandy that you can have swastikas on ships now.
November 20, 2025 at 10:52 PM
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What's happened to X has been a disaster for public discourse in the United Kingdom BUT it is also just very funny to see just how much some people will not really *notice* how degraded their media environment has become.
November 20, 2025 at 10:07 PM
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Musk's ego was mortally wounded by Joyce Carol Oates and he's been on a narcissistic supply bender since
November 20, 2025 at 7:56 PM
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November 20, 2025 at 6:39 PM
This is the big contradiction with China.

On one hand they have the developed cities with advanced manufacturing.

On the other hand they also have the other cities that they don’t want you to see.
The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.
November 20, 2025 at 12:24 AM
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Is it milk?
A handy guide to measuring like a Brit.
November 18, 2025 at 7:08 AM
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Just the president of the United States rationalizing that a Washington Post reporter was basically asking to be murdered and cut to pieces with a bone saw because of his reporting.

As he sits next to the thug who ordered it.
Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest."
November 18, 2025 at 6:01 PM