Adam Tentacles (Pre) @pre@boing.world

Is there a browser plugin like Ghostery, only it doesn't open stupid annoying popups to tell you when there's an American shopping holiday?

Highest monthly close ever. A full 40% above the previous highest monthly close.

New all time #bitcoin price high on Bitstamp.

Coinbase not quit hit new highs yet though.

Starmer is talking about whipping Labour to support any deal that the EU manages to wrangle out of BoJo.

Tricky for him.

Reckon I'd be saying something like this:

Honorable and otherwise members of the house, this is a very grave and dark day for our united kingdom.

The deal before us is awful in countless ways, and will decimate trade and industry in our country by erecting barriers and borders between us and our friends and allies on the continent and beyond.

Even darker and more grave, voting against this bill would not result in the status quo, but would instead result in even higher barriers, harder borders, and even greater destruction of trade and industry.

"No deal is better than a bad deal" was the refrain of the right honorable member for Maidenhead in Berkshire.

And this is indeed a very bad deal for Britain and also for Northern Island in particular.

But is it in fact worse than no-deal?

I judge no-deal to be worse, so will be voting for this deal but will be submitting amendments to instruct the government to immediately open negotiations with the EU for improving and extending this bad framework of a deal, to lower barriers to trade and encourage closer union.

When the devastation wrought will be so catastrophic either way, the decision for each MP is clearly a matter of conscience and the party should have no hand in whipping their decision. Our MPs must each examine their beliefs and those of their constituents to determine what they should do.

The #bbcqt question-time Zoom audience seem to be completely convinced that the government has run out of money. Even though the government creates money.

They think that it's only fair for public sector workers to get a pay-cut when private-sector employees have to have a pay cut. Even though this will cause a larger drop in demand and so hurt both sectors even more.

They think that because this virus is causing an economic crisis as bad as the 2008 one, that we should cut back expenditure like in 2008. Even though the austerity then aggravated economic damage, increased inequality and impoverished the workers.

They think that rules and laws aimed at reducing the economic hit caused by a virus are the main cause of the economic hit which the virus caused.

They think that international aid is charity and we should cut it because charity begins at home, even though international aid is mostly about kick-backs and hidden support for domestic industry.

Every sentence they mutter is a cliche of some sort.

I don't think they actually select for idiots in the audience though.

I mean to say I don't think that the public at large are quite this stupid either. It's just that the kind of person who wants to be on question time is that stupid. They are just there to shout their party slogans.

Also, I swear one of them had a photo of a bearded baby in the background :o

The nickname of the British right-wing party is the "Tory" party. It's an old Irish word meaning "Outlaw, Robber, Brigand".

The nickname of the American right-wing party is the "GOP", which stands for "Grand Old Party"

Bunch of obsequious wankers.

Bwahahhaaa.

Somewhere web-design went from "how to best make the information available and understandable" to "how to best exploit the user and take their money"

The web is getting so user-hostile these days that my mum can't even use it any more.

She used to be able to look things up, so she's worried that it's cognitive decline.

But no. Websites didn't used to pop up intelligence tests you have to pass to turn off the tracking before they'd let you read anything.

They didn't used to have paywalls that lock you out the third time you read an article.

They didn't used to pop up notifications to subscribe as soon as you move the mouse.

And that's just the user-hostile things websites do that are right in your face.

Most of the tracking and profiling and selling of your soul at auction that they do, they do behind closed doors.

I need like half a dozen browser-plugins to make the web usable for me, but she can't deal with that kinda thing and she didn't used to have to.

Pindex and Stephen Fry here reckon we subsidize fossil fuel industry by five trillion dollars per year.

We should be using carbon taxes to reverse that subsidy, maybe even paying a citizen dividend funded by them.

After all, that's your air they're polluting. Shouldn't you get some recompense?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZBzkOwohMs

I see the government is determined to choke what remains of the economy.

They will suck out what little demand is still left by freezing the wages of those few who are lucky enough that they haven't lost their jobs yet.

And all in order to continue their ideological war on the working classes.

Oh well. I'm sure rents will continue to go up and the grift machine will at least add something to GDP.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55011477

My CV has said that I'll only work for a company if I don't have to go into an office very often for most of a decade.

Now that programming companies are more willing to allow their staff to work from home, I seem to be getting more spam from agents sending me job placements.

So maybe the agents do actually read the CVs sometimes.

[I'm not looking for work, don't send me job offers]