Comedy

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Old Voices Show

Impressionists. Comedy voices. Capturing the essence of the funny.Read More

Cancel culture is a blunderbuss social justice. Not every casualty is legitimate. Not every target is as guilty as a Cosby. Not every target deserves to be sentenced to life in exile, without parole.Read More

Comedy Bits of the Decade Show

Best comedy bits as selected by the world’s most discerning connoisseur audience: past attendees of the Skankfest festival.Read More

Roasting & One-Liners Show

Roastmasters. Roastvictims. Friars. Zingers. Comedy feed. Simple one liners, 100 years of public performance domain, shuffled and presented in a 24/7 blunderbuss.Read More

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I’m a noun and so are you

16 September 2022

Sylvia Shawcross I’m afraid to go out there now. In the world I mean. Not because it is getting more and more violent or because of the germs or anything, but because I’m afraid someone is going to ask me what my pronouns are. And truth is, I haven’t got a bloody clue anymore. I …

Neom’s “The Line” – City of the Dead

15 September 2022

Karen Hunt The world is full of unanswered questions, beyond all limits or reason.”Lara Croft, Tomb Raider Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has a vision of utopia rising from the desert. It is called “Neom.” Neom combines the Greek word neos, meaning “new,” with mustaqbal, the Arabic word for “future.” The Line is …

AUDIO: “9/11 and COVID19 – false flags in the same long war on humanity.”

14 September 2022

In this episode of Perspective, Jesse Zurawell is joined by Isa Blumi, Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University. TNT Radio is a 24/7 internet radio station, available here. You can also listen to back-episodes of Perspective here

Physician, heal thyself

14 September 2022

Andrea Halewood ‘Physicians around the globe….. stop injecting these ungodly agents. Recall that you are homo sapiens – gifted with the power of thought – and return, before it is too late, to the ethics of your once so noble profession.’ Dr Sucharit Bhakdi You were once so energised by ideals; you wanted to help …

Yet another “whistleblower” means yet more censorship

13 September 2022

Kit Knightly A new Twitter “whistleblower” has come forward. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, allegedly a former hacker and Twitter’s ex-head of security, testified in front of congress today, with dire warnings about the business practices of the social media giant. Did he talk about the company’s egregious attacks on their users’ free speech under the guise …

WATCH: False Flags – The Secret History of Al Qaeda Part 3

13 September 2022

America’s decades-long debacle in the Middle East—from the invasion, occupation and eventual choatic retreat from Afghanistan to the illegal invasion of Iraq and the rise of ISIS to the regime change operations in Libya and Syria—had been portrayed as a “failure” of military planning. But, when viewed in its proper context, the war on terror …

WATCH: Covid19/11 – Narratives Intertwined (Full version)

12 September 2022

In 2021, on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, Off-Guardian asked 15 experts, including scientists, medical practitioners, journalists and activists, to share their views on 9/11 and the Covid-19 narrative. Perhaps these two narratives have more in common than we realise? A global War on Terror filtering into a global war against a virus, both instrumental …

Governors up for Reelection 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025

1 June 2022

Of the 36 gubernatorial seats up for re-election in 2022, twenty are Republican, and sixteen are Democrat.

Current Members of the U.S. House of Representatives

4 May 2022

This is a list of individuals currently serving in the United States House of Representatives as of the 117th Congress

U.S. Senate Seats up for Reelection in 2022

4 May 2022

It's 2022 vision time. The U.S. Senate elections will be held on Tuesday, November 8, 2020. Thirty-four of the 100 Senators are up for reelection and will serve a six-year term from January 3, 2023, until January 3, 2029. The time to start organizing is now.

Why Do So Many Elderly Run America?

31 March 2022

Why are US politicians so old compared to other countries?

Could Putin Be Vulnerable to a Coup?

14 March 2022

Could Putin be vulnerable to a coup or uprising? All of the grievances that traditionally motivate a coup against a dictator are in place.

Should U.S. Flight Attendants Be Paid During Boarding?

18 February 2022

The majority of U.S. airlines don't pay their flight attendants until the airplane door closes, even though plane boarding is one of the most stressful parts of their job.

QAnon vs. Hitler's Brownshirts

28 January 2021

The world has seen QAnon before. It was called Nazism.

Aftermath of flooding in Brazil’s Amazonas state

21 May 2022

The post Aftermath of flooding in Brazil’s Amazonas state appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

People take the plunge with a shark dive in Florida

18 May 2022

The post People take the plunge with a shark dive in Florida appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

The moon is seen during a lunar eclipse in Los Angeles

16 May 2022

The post The moon is seen during a lunar eclipse in Los Angeles appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

Wildfire in California

12 May 2022

The post Wildfire in California appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

A Swiss farmer works in his field with his tractor in Sullens

10 May 2022

The post A Swiss farmer works in his field with his tractor in Sullens appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

Verstappen beats Leclerc to win first Miami Grand Prix

9 May 2022

The post Verstappen beats Leclerc to win first Miami Grand Prix appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

Judge releases Oath Keepers member pending trial for U.S. Capitol attack

5 May 2022

The post Judge releases Oath Keepers member pending trial for U.S. Capitol attack appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

Fossil Fuel Industry Seeks to Expand Free Speech for Corporations and Limit It for Citizens

16 September 2022

As oil companies push to criminalize dissent, they’re also making the case that climate denialism is protected speech, not fraudulent advertising.

The post Fossil Fuel Industry Seeks to Expand Free Speech for Corporations and Limit It for Citizens appeared first on The Intercept.

When the Uneasy Democratic Coalition Shares a Neighborhood

16 September 2022

Helena Andrews-Dyer discusses the limits of "post-racial" parenting.

The post When the Uneasy Democratic Coalition Shares a Neighborhood appeared first on The Intercept.

Democratic National Committee Edited Bylaws to Let It Overrule Convention

14 September 2022

The new language requires the smaller committee to ratify any changes that its broader membership at the national convention wants to adopt.

The post Democratic National Committee Edited Bylaws to Let It Overrule Convention appeared first on The Intercept.

New Bill Would Protect Workers Who Walk Off the Job Because of Climate Disasters

14 September 2022

Rep. Cori Bush is introducing legislation to protect workers following six deaths last year caused by a tornado hitting an Amazon warehouse.

The post New Bill Would Protect Workers Who Walk Off the Job Because of Climate Disasters appeared first on The Intercept.

No Way Home, Episode Two: The Desert of Death

14 September 2022

As a desperate family tries to flee Afghanistan, a father disappears. His cousin sets off in search of answers.

The post No Way Home, Episode Two: The Desert of Death appeared first on The Intercept.

U.S. to Release Stolen Afghan Central Bank Funds to Swiss Bank

13 September 2022

A significant portion of the funds will be transferred with the aim of stabilizing the currency, overseen by a third-party trusteeship.

The post U.S. to Release Stolen Afghan Central Bank Funds to Swiss Bank appeared first on The Intercept.

Lindsey Graham's "Late-Term" Abortion Ban Is a Lie

13 September 2022

Graham's bill feigns a flawed compromise while drastically increasing enforced births and criminalizing medical care.

The post Lindsey Graham’s “Late-Term” Abortion Ban Is a Lie appeared first on The Intercept.

Stock Trades Reported by Nearly a Fifth of Congress Show Possible Conflicts

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/Lilyo to r/dataisbeautiful [link] [comments]

Murder rate in Europe

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/ndepend to r/MapPorn [link] [comments]

Just kidding

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/sanctuar4ygentle to r/conspiracy [link] [comments]

The Queue...

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/firthy to r/london [link] [comments]

Should the age to vote be reduced to 16?

16 September 2022

View Poll

submitted by /u/Ill-Reputation5167 to r/polls [link] [comments]

Denmark stops vaccinations for people under 50 because the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid.

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/Dangerous_Occasion41 to r/conspiracy_commons [link] [comments]

Just a reminder that of all the controversial people to ever go on Triggernometry, the one to cause the most "triggering" was our boi Sam Harris

16 September 2022

submitted by /u/ProofyProofy to r/samharris [link] [comments]

Let’s get logical

15 September 2022

I was refactoring some CSS on The Session over the weekend. I thought it would be good to switch over to using logical properties exclusively. I did this partly to make the site more easily translatable into languages with different writing modes, but mostly as an exercise to help train me in thinking with logical properties by default.

All in all, it went pretty smoothly. You can kick the tyres by opening up dev tools on The Session and adding a writing-mode declaration to the body or html element.

For the most part, the switchover was smooth. It mostly involved swapping out property names with left, right, top, and bottom for inline-start, inline-end, block-start, and block-end.

The border-radius properties tripped me up a little. You have to use shorthand like border-radius-start-end, not border-radius-block-start-inline-end (that doesn’t exist). So you have to keep the order of the properties in mind:

border-radius-{{block direction}}-{{inline-direction}}

Speaking of shorthand, I also had to kiss some shorthand declarations goodbye. Let’s say I use this shorthand for something like margin or padding:

margin: 1em 1.5em 2em 0.5em;

Those values get applied to margin-top, margin-right, margin-bottom, and margin-left, not the logical equivalents (block-start, inline-end, block-end, and inline-start). So separate declarations are needed instead:

margin-block-start: 1em; margin-inline-end: 1.5em; margin-block-end: 2em; margin-inline-start: 0.5em;

Same goes for shorthand like this:

margin: 1em 2em;

That needs to be written as two declarations:

margin-block: 1em; margin-inline: 2em;

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it feels really weird that you can’t use logical properties in media queries. Although as I said:

Now you could rightly argue that in this instance we’re talking about the physical dimensions of the viewport. So maybe width and height make more sense than inline and block.

But along comes the new kid on the block (or inline), container queries, ready to roll with container-type values like inline-size. I hope it’s just a matter of time until we can use logical properties in all our conditional queries.

The other place where there’s still a cognitive mismatch is in transforms and animations. We’ve got a translateX() function but no translate-inline(). We’ve got translateY() but no translate-block().

On The Session I’m using some JavaScript to figure out the details of some animation effects. I’m using methods like getBoundingClientRect(). It doesn’t return logical properties. So if I ever want to adjust my animations based on writing direction, I’ll need to fork my JavaScript code.

Oh, and one other thing: the aspect-ratio property takes values in the form of width/height, not inline/block. That makes sense if you’re dealing with images, videos, or other embedded content but it makes it really tricky to use aspect-ratio on elements that contain text. I mean, it works fine as long as the text is in a language using a top-to-bottom writing mode, but not for any other languages.

That was dConstruct 2022

13 September 2022

dConstruct 2022 happened last Friday, September 9th.

And what an event it was! All eight talks were superb. To have eight speakers and not a single dud is pretty great. To have eight speakers and each one be absolutely brilliant is more than I could’ve hoped for.

Hidde has written a summary of the talks. I loved each and every one. I got to sit there in the front row of the beautiful Duke of York’s cinema and watch these supersmart people blow my mind.

With six of the eight speakers having spoken at previous dConstructs, there was a lot of nostalgia in the air on Friday.

It was the last dConstruct.

A lot of people seemed surprised by this even though I kept saying it was a one-off event. Really, the last dConstruct happened in 2015. This year’s event was a one-time-only anniversary event.

Obviously because the day was so great, people expressed sadness and disappointment that there wouldn’t be another. But like I said, if a band like The Velvet Underground reforms to do one last gig, that’s pretty cool; but if a band like The Velvet Underground reforms to go on endless tours, that’s kind of sad. It’s time to move on. Have one last blow-out and go out in style.

And who knows? Maybe there’ll be some other kind of dConstructy gathering in a different format. Perhaps an evening salon event is more suited to this kind of interdisciplinary mish-mash. But as a one-day conference, dConstruct is now officially over.

To be honest, there was never any doubt that dConstruct 2022 would be an excellent day of talks. I knew that each of the speakers would deliver the goods. I played it somewhat safe with the line-up. Because this was a kind of “best of” event, I could draw upon speakers from previous years who were guaranteed to be mesmerising.

In a weird way, that also highlights the biggest problem with this year’s dConstruct. Even though every individual talk was terrific, when you pull back and look at the line-up in aggregate, you can’t help but notice its lack of diversity.

That’s on me.

I could show you the list of people I tried to get. I could talk you through the spots that fell through. But all I’d be doing is giving you excuses. I could show that my intentions were good, but intentions don’t matter as much as actions. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and what we ate last Friday was wonderful but also sadly representative of dConstruct’s homogenous history. For that reason alone, it’s time to draw a line under dConstruct.

It was a bittersweet send-off. On the one hand, I got to enjoy a day of brilliant talks. On the other hand, I’m pretty disappointed in myself that the line-up wasn’t more diverse. I can make all the claims I want about valuing diversity, but they’re hollow without meaningful results.

So that’s enough looking to the past. I’m bidding farewell to dConstruct and setting my sights on the future, a future that features more and different voices.

If you came along to dConstruct 2022, thank you! If you enjoyed attending dConstruct just half as much as I enjoyed hosting it …well, then I enjoyed it twice as much as you.

Sunday

12 September 2022

I’m taking a nice long weekend break after dConstruct on Friday (I will of course have more to say on that—I’m collecting my thoughts still—but it was a wonderful day).

On Saturday I did absolutely nothing. It was just as well really, considering that I may have over-indulged in the pub on Friday evening after dConstruct was done. So a day of lounging around idly playing mandolin was just the ticket.

Yesterday, Sunday, I had one of those perfect leisurely days.

It began with a good bout of lazing about in the morning. Then, as lunchtime approached, Jessica and I went to a nearby pub for a Sunday Roast. In this case it was the Dover Castle. It turned out to be an excellent choice—top notch roasts!

While we were enjoying our lunch, Jessica spotted a poster on the wall for Bark In The Park, a local fun day of dog-centred activities. We were sure it had already happened earlier in Summer, but the poster said it was rescheduled to …yesterday!

So after lunch we went to the park and spent the next few hours in the sunshine, petting very good dogs and enjoying the spectacle of such catgories as “fancy dress”, “best rescue”, and “sausage catching.” We left shortly before the announcement of “best in show”—my money was on Mayhem—so I could nip home, grab my mandolin, and head to The Bugle pub for the weekly 4pm Irish music session.

After two hours of jigs’n’reels, I headed home. The weather was still lovely. The forecast was for cloudy weather, but it was unexpectedly sunny. So I fired up the outdoor grill.

We grilled: one aubergine, halved and scored; one yellow courgette, halved; one green courgette, halved; half a hispe cabbage, quartered. Once they were nicely charred outside and soft within, we ate them with a drizzle of tahini sauce, accompanied by a green salad.

By that time the sun had gone down and it was time for a nice evening spent watching the latest episode of The Rings Of Power and drinking a nice cup of tea.

Like a said, a perfect leisurely day.

One day to dConstruct

8 September 2022

Just one more sleep until dConstruct—squee!

Not that I anticipate getting much sleep. My sleepnessness will partly be like that of a child on the night before Christmas. But my sleepnessness will also inevitably be that of an adult neurotically worrying about trifling details.

In reality, everything is all set. Thanks to the stellar Clearleft events team, I don’t need to lose any sleep. But my stupid brain can’t help but run a conveyer belt of potential problems through my mind: what about dongles? Power? Timings? What if there’s an impromptu rail strike? A deluge? Other emergencies you can’t even imagine?

I try to ignore those pestering pointless questions and instead think about the fantastic talks we’re going to get. I’m genuinely excited about each and every speaker. I’m pretty sure that once the day begins, I’ll forget all my worries and bliss out to the mind-expanding presentations.

The day before a conference feels kind of like the build-up to a battle. All the strategic decisions have been made, everything is in place, and now there’s nothing to do but wait.

I’ve communicated (or maybe over-communicated) all the relevant details to the speakers. And one week ago I sent one final email to the attendees with details of the schedule and some suggestions for lunch.

I also included this request:

Could you do me a favour? Would you mind getting a hold of a Covid test sometime in the next week and taking a test a day or two before dConstruct? (And if you test positive, please don’t come to the event.)

If you can’t get hold of a test (I know it can be tricky), then could you please bring a mask to wear when inside the venue?

I think asking everyone to take a test is a reasonable request, and nobody has objected to it. I worry that it’s yet another form of hygiene theatre (like providing anti-bacterial handwash for an airborne virus). After all, the antigen tests are most effective when you’ve already got symptoms. Taking a test when you don’t have symptoms might well give a negative result, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have Covid. Still, it’s a little intervention that might catch an infection that otherwise would’ve spread further.

I’m assuming that everyone coming to dConstruct is vaccinated. Maybe that’s naive on my part, but I figure if you’re intelligent enough to get a dConstruct ticket, you’re intelligent enough to protect yourself and others. So we won’t be requesting proof of vaccination. I hope my naivety aligns with reality.

See, this is all one more thing for my brain to gnaw on when I should be thinking about what a fantastic day of talks I’ve got ahead of me. Roll on tomorrow!

dConstruct update

30 August 2022

Not long now until the last ever dConstruct. It’s on Friday of next week, that’s the 9th of September. And there are still a few tickets available if you haven’t got yours yet.

I have got one update to the line-up to report. Sadly, Léonie Watson isn’t going to be able to make it after all. That’s a shame.

But that means there’s room to squeeze in one more brilliant speaker from the vaults of the dConstruct archive.

I’m very pleased to announce that Seb Lee-Delisle will be returning, ten years after his first dConstruct appearance.

Back then he was entertaining us with hardware hacking and programming for fun. That was before he discovered lasers. Now he’s gone laser mad.

Don’t worry though. He’s fully qualified to operate lasers so he’s not going to take anyone’s eye out at dConstruct. Probably.

Work ethics

23 August 2022

If you’re travelling around Ireland, you may come across some odd pieces of 19th century architecture—walls, bridges, buildings and roads that serve no purpose. They date back to The Great Hunger of the 1840s. These “famine follies” were the result of a public works scheme.

The thinking went something like this: people are starving so we should feed them but we can’t just give people food for nothing so let’s make people do pointless work in exchange for feeding them (kind of like an early iteration of proof of work for cryptobollocks on blockchains …except with a blockchain, you don’t even get a wall or a road, just ridiculous amounts of wasted energy).

This kind of thinking seems reprehensible from today’s perspective. But I still see its echo in the work ethic espoused by otherwise smart people.

Here’s the thing: there’s good work and there’s working hard. What matters is doing good work. Often, to do good work you need to work hard. And so people naturally conflate the two, thinking that what matters is working hard. But whether you work hard or not isn’t actually what’s important. What’s important is that you do good work.

If you can do good work without working hard, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s great—you’ve managed to do good work and do it efficiently! But often this very efficiency is treated as laziness.

Sensible managers are rightly appalled by so-called productivity tracking because it measures exactly the wrong thing. Those instruments of workplace surveillance measure inputs, not outputs (and even measuring outputs is misguided when what really matters are outcomes).

They can attempt to measure how hard someone is working, but they don’t even attempt to measure whether someone is producing good work. If anything, they actively discourage good work; there’s plenty of evidence to show that more hours equates to less quality.

I used to think that must be some validity to the belief that hard work has intrinsic value. It was a position that was espoused so often by those around me that it seemed a truism.

But after a few decades of experience, I see no evidence for hard work as an intrinsically valuable activity, much less a useful measurement. If anything, I’ve seen the real harm that can be caused by tying your self-worth to how much you’re working. That way lies burnout.

We no longer make people build famine walls or famine roads. But I wonder how many of us are constructing little monuments in our inboxes and calendars, filling those spaces with work to be done in an attempt to chase the rewards we’ve been told will result from hard graft.

I’d rather spend my time pursuing the opposite: the least work for the most people.

The schedule for dConstruct 2022

17 August 2022

The last ever dConstruct will happen just over three weeks from now, on Friday, September 9th.

That’s right—if you don’t have your ticket for this event, you won’t get another chance. The conference with its eye on the future will become a thing of the past.

dConstruct is going to go out with a bang, a veritable fireworks display of mind bombs. A calligrapher, a writer, a musician, and a nueroscientist will be on the line-up alongside designers and technologists.

Here’s the schedule for the day:

8:30Registration begins 9:50Opening remarks 10:00George Oates 10:30Lauren Beukes 11:00Break 11:30Seb Lester 12:00Daniel Burka 12:30Lunch 14:00Sarah Angliss 14:30Matt Webb 15:00Break 15:30Léonie Watson 16:00Anil Seth 16:30Closing remarks

So the first talk starts at 10am and the last talk finishes at 4:30pm—all very civilised. Then we can all go to the pub.

There isn’t an official after-party but we can collectively nominate a nearby watering hole—the Unbarred taproom perhaps, or maybe The Hare And Hounds or The Joker—they’re all within cat-swinging distance of The Duke Of York’s.

Lunch isn’t provided but there are some excellent options nearby (and you’ll have a good hour and a half for the lunch break so there’s no rush).

The aforementioned Joker has superb hot wings from Lost Boys Chicken (I recommed the Rufio sauce if you like ‘em spicy, otherwise Thuddbutt is a good all ‘rounder).

The nearby Open Market has some excellent food options, including Casa Azul for superb Mexican food, and Kouzina for hearty Greek fare.

And the famous Bardsley’s fish’n’chips is just ‘round the corner too.

So there’ll be plenty of food for the soul to match the food for your brain that’ll be doled up at dConstruct 2022.

Mexican mangroves have been capturing carbon for 5,000 years

16 September 2022

Researchers have identified a new reason to protect mangrove forests: they've been quietly keeping carbon out of Earth's atmosphere for the past 5,000 years.

Spanish islanders struggle one year after volcanic eruption

16 September 2022

"Our plan now is... there are no plans," said a tearful Leticia Sanchez Garcia, a year after her house was buried under lava from a volcano that erupted on the Spanish island of La Palma.

Media-saturation challenges trust in European democracy

16 September 2022

Between doomscrolling and disinformation, our media-saturated world makes it difficult to know who to trust. To mark today's International Day of Democracy we spoke to a journalism researcher about the role of media in a healthy democracy.

Climate-fueled hunger more than doubles in worst-hit countries: report

16 September 2022

From record droughts to catastrophic floods, the world's worst climate hotspots are seeing a surge in acute hunger, according to an Oxfam report that called on rich nations to drastically cut their emissions and compensate low-income countries.

Plastic garbage covers Central American rivers, lakes and beaches

16 September 2022

A blanket of multi-colored plastic waste flowing in from tributaries covers Lake Suchitlan in El Salvador.

Climate change jeopardizes health care services, report says

16 September 2022

Dr. Suzy Fitzgerald remembers looking out the windows as wildfire flames surrounded the hospital where she worked.

Mexican government says train poses no threat to skeleton

16 September 2022

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said Thursday that a prehistoric human skeleton found recently in a flooded cave system along the country's Caribbean coast was actually registered by the institute in 2019 and would not be threatened by a nearby tourist train project.