Tech Dad - East Anglian - Jumped up country boy - London, UK - Views solely my own.
London, England
Joined April 2024
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The delusion of woke was treating groups as individuals and individuals as groups. It is not “woke right” to treat groups as groups as long as you also treat individuals as individuals.
Nathan Cofnas may have helped to expose Jason Arday’s shoddy scholarship, but that doesn’t mean his own ideas have any merit. His claims about race and intelligence are as batty as the woke nonsense he rails against, says Albie Amankona
spiked-online.com/2026/08/29…
If we want people to be able to change their mind we can't be tempted to ridicule this change of rules. But by god, the horrors and tragedies which might have been avoided. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx5y…
"retold by" in larger font and above the original author. Remove's possibly the most famous opening line in literature. Just buy the original and read it with your kids and help them with the hard bits.
Oliver Fisk retweeted
We're in a new era of communication, and only one side seems to be living in it. The old guard consultant class is about to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
If you think that high prices lost the election for the right, you don't understand marketing. Humans have no problem paying a premium for a good quality brand. Notice the word "brand", not "product". Are Nikes better than New Balance? Nope. But the brand is better. And notice what happened when they tinkered with the brand and screwed their core narrative? Nike stock fell through the basement. Did the product change? Nope. The brand did.
It's not the product, it's the brand. Results don't sell the product, the storytelling does. Will these newly-elected commies lower prices? Of course not. Are they gonna get you free healthcare? No, your insurance is gonna get even worse, just like it did the last time they tried socialized medicine. They're not going to do anything they've sold you, but...like Saul Goodman said: if you're committed enough, you can make any story work.
The committed storytelling of a couple insane podcasters was enough to fracture an entire political coalition from their own side in less than 2 years...they have zero power, zero credibility, they've never actually governed anything nor produced any results, but...they're good storytellers, and that's all that matters. Are they telling a good story? No, it's atrocious, but they're telling their atrocious story effectively and compellingly.
It is 100% true that everything's too damn expensive, and we all know that inflated prices are always sticky. Does anyone know that it's entirely the result of shutting down the global economy over the flu and (both naive republicans and democrats) printing infinity dollars for several years? Nope...because nobody has effectively told that story, and it's an unsexy story to tell. "Free stuff!" is a VERY easy story to tell, and when everyone's gotta take out a second mortgage just to pay their insurance premiums, "free healthcare" is an unbeatable story. It doesn't matter that "free healthcare" doesn't exist and socialized medicine is a terrible product...it's not the product, it's the brand. And "FREE!" is a great brand.
You can't get mad at people for having the financial literacy of a 9 year old. I mean, you can, but they outnumber you a million to one, so it's not going to be productive. You need to figure out how to make an unsexy story sexy, or else the "free stuff!" crowd is going to eat your lunch every time. If you give people a choice between earning a six pack on a treadmill or taking Ozempic, they're gonna choose Ozempic...they don't care about the side effects. If you give people a choice between fiscal discipline or free stuff...guess what they'll pick? They don't care about the side effects.
With projected growth of 5%, the economy right now is stronger than it's been in generations. Is that the story you hear? Nope. Is that the vibe you feel? Absolutely not, especially when every time you fill up your gas tank, it feels like a diesel enema.
It's not the product, it's the brand. A great product can fall into oblivion with bad messaging...a single bad review from one effective storyteller can tank a restaurant. The "influencer economy" is lucrative for a reason; everybody inherently understands the importance of effective storytelling...except the right. Zohran Mamdani gets it...he has an army of influencers on staff. In a perfect metaphor of this transitional phase of old guard vs new wave political messaging, Zohran nuked the Vice President into oblivion with maybe the biggest ratio in the history of the internet. By simply posting the subway assistant meme, Mamdani got 2 MILLION likes, quoting a post from the VP that had only 10K likes. If you're reading that sentence thinking "this is fucking ridiculous, you're talking about social media likes as political analysis now?"...you are the problem.
Yes, this stuff matters. Rizz matters. The President did a masterful job of this kind of retail politics in his historic 2024 campaign...you can be angry that this is what politics has been reduced to, but you can either adapt or die.
"No the problem is, you didn't deliver enough for the American people!" Are you a moron? Since when does anybody care about that? What have democrats delivered for Californians in the last 20 years? Unmitigated wildfires, homeless drug zombies everywhere, roads that look like Fallujah in 2004...people don't care about results. They think they care about results. That want you to believe they care about results, just as Nike wants you to believe their shoes are better than New Balance...but at the end of the day, all people really care about is the swoosh.
Adapt or die.
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but most political advisors are so bafflingly incompetent, it would make your head spin. All the talented communicators go work in Hollywood or at Saatchi and Saatchi, and these political bros never tap these agencies for help...I've connected several campaigns with literally the best marketing geniuses in the game, got them discounted rates, even...and they just never even bothered calling. It truly feels like a lot of consultants and candidates just want to lose.
You ever wonder how my ads went so massively viral, but there's not been a single candidate who's come close to it? It's their dumbass advisors. I didn't go with any political advisors, and they were SO mad about it. I partnered with a filmmaker and marketing wizard, instead of political grifters. Why? Because I wanted our messaging to be effective. Political ads suck. Nobody watches them. I wanted people to want to watch my ads. The fact that nobody else understands this is...I honestly don't know how to explain it, other than they want to lose.
There are a bunch of candidates who love it when their party loses power. It takes all the heat off them, because then they can't be expected to pass legislation when they're in the minority, plus they can fundraise way better off of the rage when the opposition is running roughshod over the country. Baffling to watch.
Oliver Fisk retweeted
You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland).
You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.
And yet we still have chumps like the guy on here last week huffing and puffing as to why "engineers" aren't allowed even local admin by those fuddy duddies in "IT".
"compromised DevOps engineer's laptop" I swear to god if this was Contagious Interview, I'm moving to North Korea and stealing bitcoin for a living.
For context, Contagious Interview is one of DPRK's techniques where they reach out to developers in the target organization and offer them higher paying jobs.
They then tell them the job offer is contingent on them completing a "coding skills assessment" to prove their ability.
The source code is backdoored with malware, and the targets sometime run it on their work laptop, because why wouldn't you run untrusted code some random internet dude gave you on your work laptop.
This is absolutely unreal. We are in end of civilisation scenes. No functional society can exist where this is the benchmark for behaviour that requires an investigation and a public apology. Outrageous abuse of power and process.
Oliver Fisk retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: A UK bank chief executive has said of Healey's budget:
"Taxing the engines of growth to reduce VAT on gherkins is end-of-Rome level of stupidity"
ft.com/content/80acb561-34e2…
Many think having a pint is "normal" but that is due to entrenched historical traditions and therapeutic myths encouraged by the drinks industry. Often used by politicians for "man of the ppl" rhetoric. It is a actually a harmful psychoactive drug on many levels. @grok #Gogglebox
What we are discovering is that humans were absolutely terrible at software development and we should never have been allowed to do it.
Announcing 3 Critical vulns for hundreds of millions of IoT, Firewalls, OT, and Military devices including: Palo Alto Networks, Comcast, D-Link, HP, Canon, Honeywell, GE, Oracle, Siemens, Rockwell, Digi, Lockheed Martin, Boeing...
The vulns are with GoAhead Web Server which is a backend library used by these devices. There's a patch available from GoAhead but that doesn't mean there's a patch available for the devices yet -- that's up to the manufacturer.
- TLS traffic over DHE ciphers have a 1-byte secret, "04", meaning anyone can decrypt connections to these devices and steal login credentials and session tokens if the client negotiated with DHE ciphers like the latest TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, which is extremely likely.
- LibreSSL mTLS has been completely bypassed, meaning anyone can connect over mTLS. If you have one of these devices listening on the internet and are expecting mTLS to protect it from attackers, take it offline or patch asap.
- OpenSSL Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) are not enforced, meaning if a user device is stolen or compromised, and you revoke that mTLS cert, nothing actually happens. There are a lot of other attacks this can be used for.
These are critical because these types of devices run our world. Water systems, electricity, military, firewalls, critical infrastructure.
foxio.io/blog/choose-your-ba…
Consider that the relentless war and stockpiling talk may be very sophisticated psyops designed to tip a % of people towards “safety” and “continuity” in that crucial moment at the ballot box.
Important, when they are so easily overlooked.
Tonight, Cardiff Castle will light up green to mark Dwarfism Awareness Day. 💚
The illumination celebrates diversity and helps raise awareness and understanding of dwarfism. orlo.uk/S4Qel
ALT Cardiff Castle illuminated at night by bright green floodlights against a dark sky. Caer Castell Caerdydd wedi'i oleuo wrth nos gan fflachlysau gwyrdd disglair yn erbyn awyr dywyll.
This sort of Starmerist simp-writing exposes the core defect of the associated worldview. Percy keeps the correspondence to show… to whom? Some as yet identified greater authority? Who isn’t also corrupt? Who gets their authority how?
Percy Weasley becomes Umbridge’s assistant and accidentally destroys her entire regime through administrative incompetence. Except he thinks he’s doing an excellent job.
Umbridge hands him a decree banning students from gathering in groups of more than three.
Percy reads it, frowns, and returns it with corrections.
“Professor, I’m afraid this is poorly worded. Surely you mean unsupervised gatherings during class hours? Otherwise, how are students supposed to attend lessons?”
Umbridge stares at him.
“Mr Weasley, I mean exactly what I wrote.”
“Ah. Then I’m afraid the wording is still ambiguous. I’ve rewritten it to avoid unnecessary confusion.”
The next decree bans students from discussing Ministry policy.
Percy crosses it out.
“Freedom of discussion is essential to a healthy educational environment. I’ve changed it to prohibit deliberate disruption of lessons. Much more reasonable, don’t you think?”
Umbridge’s smile twitches.
Then comes the bribery.
“Mr Weasley, loyal assistants are often rewarded with opportunities for advancement.”
“How wonderful! I’m sure the Ministry’s promotion process will be transparent and merit-based.”
The threats follow.
“You would do well to remember who has the power to make or break your career.”
“Of course, Professor! That’s why I’ve kept copies of all our correspondence. Proper documentation protects everyone.”
Umbridge looks as though she might swallow her own teacup.
When she complains about anti-Ministry dissidents at Hogwarts, Percy assumes she means a few unruly students.
“Goodness, Professor. Have you spoken to their Head of House? I’m sure this can be resolved through the appropriate channels.”
“And what about the girl who publishes lies about me?”
“Rita Skeeter? I wouldn’t worry. The public tends to lose interest in these things eventually.”
By the end of the month, Percy has rewritten half her decrees, discarded the ones he considers legally indefensible, and accidentally ensured that the Inquisitorial Squad needs three separate authorisations to confiscate a student’s quill.
The D.A. continues meeting.
The teachers continue teaching.
The students continue breathing.
And Umbridge is slowly losing her mind.
Meanwhile, Percy writes home to his parents:
Dear Mum and Dad,
My new position is going exceptionally well. Professor Umbridge values my attention to detail, and I believe I've made a meaningful contribution to improving Hogwarts' administrative efficiency.
She does seem rather stressed lately. I suspect she's having difficulty adjusting to the demands of senior management.
Love, Percy.
Somewhere in Hogwarts, Umbridge is screaming into a cushion.
Percy is already drafting a proposal for a more efficient complaints procedure.
So this is a fair take and as something of a prepper myself not something I’d argue against. But it ignores the question of “why push this now”, and the answer to that is either govt incompetence or malfeasance.
“We get to maintain our social status with a hiking boot on the neck of the poor. We can look unconcerned by filthy things such as money, trade and growth by just keeping everyone else down. You may not have houses or shops. The exact correct number of houses includes ours”
Oliver Fisk retweeted
At your wedding, there would be a few random +1’s you’d never met but you could reasonably refer to the ensemble as friends and family.
If the wedding was crashed by hundreds of strangers you absolutely would not.
This is my take on the Englishness debate.
