News From The Void

General Discussion
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I grew up in an area of Liverpool called Walton in the 1950s and 1960s. That was a fairly grim time in England - nobody had any money, every family had lost people in the war, and there was still a lot of bomb damage around my home city.

We didn’t have a TV, but there was a local library - Spellow library. As a kid, Spellow library became my window on another world. It was where my love of books and reading began. It was where my knowledge of different ideas and cultures took root. It was my haven against the darkness.

Last night, rioters set fire to Spellow library.

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More anti-immigration/islamophobia arson I can only assume? All it takes is a rumor these days to bring the thugs out in mobs. Same thing is happening here too unfortunately but nothing as ruthless as what I’ve been reading about in the UK these past few weeks. Is this still blow over from the riots during the vigil for the children last week?

It’s very clearly obvious what the cause is, that more needs to be done about online radicalisation and misinformation but I’ve yet to see any government either side of the pond actually address the seriousness of this.

It’s even more annoying knowing Facebooks EU HQ is in my capitol so the tax income that brings will most likely always trump using that position to call for better practices and change. Because if tech companies have shown us anything, if you try and mess with their bottom line they will threaten to lay off their workforce in your country and go where the labour is cheaper. And no government seems to want to truly stand up to that bullshit. These companies will also turn around with the other cheek and say “We care deeply for our employees and workforce”.

I feel a lot of vulnerable people were scooped up in far right radicalised pipelines during the lockdown and the fervour and insanity has just been bubbling over to boiling point the last few years. Theres always been a hard stance against immigration throughout the centuries but it hasn’t been this frequent and violent and widespread in a long long time.

I’m so sorry to hear this place that meant so much to you in your youth is yet another casualty in the absolute buffoonery of humanity. If history has also shown us anything, it’s that communities rally together and bounce back pretty quick from radical malfunctions like this, you guys will build back a better library that will no doubt memorialise what was lost.

Edit:
Some context for recent events on the former vacation island of Anglo Lords :wink:

The ol “its not us rich, its them foreign poors” bait and switch. A tried and tested method I guess but it’s just frustrating to see us stuck in the mud like this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ireland+anti+immigration+news&sca_esv=ac30a6573e39848f&biw=1366&bih=679&tbm=nws&sxsrf=ADLYWIKSbSKTfn97AdooA9buMVAtwk-kJw%3A1722778685975&ei=PYSvZsGbO4yShbIPgMyTqAs&ved=0ahUKEwiBrurcutuHAxUMSUEAHQDmBLUQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=ireland+anti+immigration+news&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LW5ld3MiHWlyZWxhbmQgYW50aSBpbW1pZ3JhdGlvbiBuZXdzSK1BUNomWN5AcAB4AJABAJgBbKAB3RCqAQQyNi40uAEDyAEA-AEBmAIcoAKeEMICBRAhGKABwgIFECEYnwXCAgoQABiABBhDGIoFwgIREAAYgAQYkQIYsQMYgwEYigXCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgIEEAAYA8ICEBAAGIAEGLEDGEMYgwEYigXCAg4QABiABBiRAhixAxiKBcICCxAAGIAEGJECGIoFwgIFEAAYgATCAggQABiABBjHA8ICCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFwgIIEAAYgAQYogTCAgYQABgWGB7CAgcQIRigARgKwgIEECEYFZgDAIgGAZIHBDI0LjSgB7SbAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-news

even bigots in belfast are bonding over their shared hatred born of their own ignorance to all and anyone but themselves.

I thought this might be cathartic for the americans here. See? It’s not just your country that’s losing its mind, us Europeans can do it too xoxo <3

More political ramblings

Ireland never really had a far right party, the nearest thing we had to it was Sinn Feinn and they just wanted a united Ireland above all else and may or may not have its origins and ties with the IRA. They weren’t so much racist as just, anti-british due to generational trauma I suppose.

So what has happened in recent years, since the lockdown mostly cos thats when this online stuff truly dug its roots into the populace here, is a lot of disparate grass roots partys have popped up, with different flavours of hatred of the “other”. It’s kind of comical, and they didn’t do very well vote wise.

But it is a little worrying that its still happening. And their “leaders” seem to always be in or around these violent protests. There to “peacefully document” but the evidence is clear they are orchestrating a lot of it. And they’re getting their advice from a former KKK guy :see_no_evil:

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Yes, the initial driver behind the current disturbances is reaction to the attacks on children in Southport, and yes, the issue has been co-opted by anti-immigration campaigners.

However, most of the rioters in Walton only appeared to be teenagers themselves. I don’t think most of the people involved in the violence have any real political agenda - I think they’re just disaffected young men looking for trouble.

What struck me was the horrible irony of solving problems by burning libraries. Like we could improve our situation by destroying knowledge and understanding less. How very Trumpian.

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It’s that weird rejection of authority that also comes paired with a rejection of education because I guess it’s one of the earliest forms of “authorative control” a person experiences?

Like I remember the “trouble makers” in my primary and secondary level of education would be of the mind that “readings for losers” or “books are gay”. And I know it wasnt unique to my generation, it seems to be part of the human condition in such a society.

Everyone having a fish eye lens in their pocket and a Tannoy connected to a global stream of consciousness just makes it manifest in a larger and more organised fashion than before.

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@Polyphemus I’m sorry that a personally important place to you was wrecked by those rioters. That you posted it here, says a lot about what it meant to you.

It’s even sadder that it is was a harmless place of mindfulness & knowledge & that its destruction was wrought by hatred & misinformation following a tragic event.

Social media has become a carrier of disease.

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Sadly, this mentality has set in over the entire globe like a wildfire that cannot be put out. I can not help but think of Farenheit 451. They may not have burned any libraries here, yet, but they have begun rewriting the history books. If you can’t get people to agree with your view, then rewrite history to make it support your view. Then remove all the books that do not support it from all the libraries. There have been some book burnings here. I suspect more to come. We live in scary times and it feels like all the hardcopies of books need to be hidden away someplace safe. This is when the age of digitizing everything, which can be deleted or rewritten with a few strokes, is coming back to bite us in the backside.

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This is a case of misery not liking company.

It’s sad, depressing really. Some politicians have deliberately stoked the flames of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. It will take the world a while to recover.

My sense is that these politicians did not create a lot of new racists, bigots, and xenophobes. Rather, they lent a feeling of legitimacy to those people and has emboldened them to act.

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

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It’s incredible to see such cognitive bias in action

Theres these weird bits where he auto-masks and brings up “left” speaking points like “mainstream media makes people more right wing” and “social media spreads misinformation” and I could only think of this sketch from Big Train (its got simon peeeegg in iiiit, oooo OOOooo ooo)

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RTE aired an investigative documentary on the anti-immigration protests, arsonry, etc last night that had been/are still taking place in Ireland and I think this sums up very well the kind of unfortunate people who get wrapped up in this aimless angry misdirected nonsense…

I was going to share the picture to Getting a Laugh out of Life but then I remembered this place '^ _ ^

1200×1600 303 KB

It was from COVID times but I’m sure they’ll be wearing 'em proudly again soon '^ _^

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Alright. If they can’t spell “their”, how can we be sure any of the other words are spelled properly?

Did they mean “RTE sold their soles”? Footwear retail? Flat fish vending?

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There is a Schuh footwear store directly down the road from the GPO now that you mention it…

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Amen, bro!

First thing I thought was, “There, there. You’ll eventually learn how to use ‘their’.”

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Okay now this is kinda getting ridiculous ':slight_smile:

So, we made the “AI’s” do a lot of peoples jobs really quickly, so we can fire pretty much all of our researchers, I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t really understand what it is we do at this company but ya see this? …say’s CEO.

Now these things need a lot of juice, unlike our former meat slaves who just needed pennies and nutrients, so we’re going to need to buy an expensive powerful source of Nuclear Energy. You know, what our previous Vassals didn’t need, harnessed atomic energy.

I also think we should lobby to rebrand it as NewClean Energy.

I would say it went exactly more or less soooomething like that.

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I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Microsoft’s track record with technology they acquire is to change it to something only Microsoft has patents on, then shut it down.

They will rip out the nuclear reactors, replace them with MicrosoftTM whale-oil burners, replace the generators with MicrosoftTM 172 volt 5 phase 96 hz alternators, thus ensuring that nobody but Microsoft can ever use it - then they’ll close the site.

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Thank you! I am writing that down so one day there will be a wiki page that reads, This guy foretold it on this forum on this date.

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…Sounds more like rotten Apple proprietary actions. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Have to post this so people elsewhere can get a feel for what it is like here these days…

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I noticed when Trump was in office, you could tell when he was going to do something unethical / unlawful / criminal, because before he did it, he would accuse the Democrats of doing it first.

If Trump gets in again, expect him to round up immigrants and feed them stray cats and dogs. Expect him to withhold disaster aid from Democrat areas.

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And now he wants Musk as an advisor. The man is set to be the world’s first trillionaire. Truely terrifying scenario is setting up.

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