nephihaha

Simon Singh is a very entertaining writer, I'll give him that. (Also a pleasant person, I've met him once or twice.)

Apologies. I don't see them because I have an advert blocker on my browser, so didn't realise it was so bad. Noted for future.

Maoist China was full of slavery. Even today China uses slave labour to produce goods in prison camps etc. It didn't end slavery in Tibet, it just industrialised it and redefined it.

"The only example really is the annexation of Tibet in 1950, which was obviously controversial but it's also complicated because it ended the practice of slavery in Tibet. Yes, slavery."

That depends on whether you consider Marxist concentration camps to be slavery or not.

The answer is generally yes. Europe does have respectable health and safety in most workplaces thanks to decades of campaigning and trade unionism. Far from perfect, but better than many parts of the world. Besides which, in recent times, many dangerous jobs e.g. mining and heavy industry have either been shut down or exported elsewhere.

It will be great when it's used to help the severely disabled. Not so great when we're all forced to use it and have advertising beamed into our dreams.

There are three Green parties in the UK. There isn't a "UK Green Party" as such. Polanski's is England and Wales.

There are three Green Parties in the UK. The SGP members have had a supply agreement with the ruling SNP in the Scottish Parliament for years. There was even talk of them being in coalition for a while.

Green Party of England and Wales.

Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own Green Parties. There is no single UK Green Party.

The recent Elizabeth Holmes documentary probably counts.

"historically the fossil fuel industry has been a major funding cornerstone of the right."

The Eastern Bloc in the Cold War was extremely keen on fossil fuels (and nuclear power) and very poor at dealing with pollution. As is the PRC.

In Western Europe, coal miners were the backbone of the far left in places like Germany and the UK including Communist parties. The British Labour Party's vote was traditionally strongest in coal mining areas.

I don't know so much about the US situation, but I am aware that some American coal miners were involved in socialist movements there many decades ago.

Thank you. I've been looking at the wrong end of the page and tried to do it with an external search engine that returned no useful results.

Diana Muldaur is still around. Probably some of the child actors.

Michael Forest, the guy who played Apollo, also passed away recently.

I had tried to search for this on the site but did not get any search results returned. What is the best way to the site?

At least this is a different article.

"This is one of the problems with what the Celts did: they didn't write."

That is a common misconception. We don't have much in the way of ancient Celtic writing, or even enough, but we do have some . The best known example is the Coligny Calendar. Some of the Celtic peoples used the Greek script and variants. There is also debate about how old Ogham is (although AFAIK there is no evidence of it from Hallstatt and La Tene).

I would not be surprised if some pre-Roman Celtic writing does turn up from this region at some point.

"I'm trying to less divide the world by country or similar, and divide it more by Oligarchy and The People. The vast majority of us have the same needs, dreams, and desires. The Oligarchy and media (they largely control) seek to divide us."

A world government will be a disaster. It will have every problem of current governments writ larger including corruption.

"You seem intent on being argumentative, in considering your collection of comments under this flagged post, so I'm checking out of this thread. I hope you do the same"

Doubt you will read this, but it's called sticking up for yourself. You should try it some time. A pity this site is run on peer pressure. Peer pressure causes half the problems in this world from blanket conformity to kids taking up smoking.

Old school magazines and newspapers have not adapted well to the internet at all. I don't entirely understand the psychology of it, but somehow it was a lot more satisfying to buy a print magazine and hold it in your hand than take out an online sub. I think it was partly because I tended to buy individual issues based on the cover or contents, rather than buying them blind.

Unfortunately, when these pubs' readership started to decline, so did their revenue and they would have started taking money from "philanthropists" with an axe to grind. (Not always in the obvious areas. I used to read a local sports magazine which has ended up little more than a promotion for various private schools.)

There was always an element of soft power about Scientific American, and it was tailored partly to people without specialist expertise in whatever field, but it did not feel like political propaganda back in the nineties.

I find it "non-constructive" when someone tells me I can't speak English properly and alleges I am a paid agent of Russia.

On the issue above... I mean, FFS, Gibson is a well known writer and has been for what feels like at least forty years. Not one of my favourites admittedly, but well known. We could find something else on him than yet another bloody Wikipedia link.

I hardly ever write on the Ukrainian conflict on here, and get accused of being a Russian shill, because I posted once or twice on this matter.

It's not my main interest. Not even close. I post far more on other subjects. I avoid talking about Gaza because someone like you would jump on whatever I say. There are certain other topics I cannot discuss openly on here, because of the same.

It was an American who once said, "truth is the first casualty of war". If your discussion only consists of endorsing everything the government says then you are not in favour of free speech.

I don't agree with Putin. I have said repeatedly I think his.government is corrupt.

If you disagree with something I say, then post a decent rebuttal that doesn't involve labelling me a "shill", "bot", 'Russian agent" etc.

I get exposed to far more western propaganda here, mate. Russia Today is banned (at least on TV.) NATO all the way. One of my best friends watches this stuff most of the day. There is plenty of misinformation in there too... Like that the war is about to end. I've been hearing that for at least four or five years, but it's ground on every since. (I'm sure Moscow puts out similar crap "victory is ours" etc.) Except it hasn't.

The real beneficiaries here are arms dealers and military leaders. They're doing a roaring trade while thousands of people die. War makes money. There are obviously some people benefitting from this attrition otherwise it would have gone to proper talks and negotiations.

I don't have any interest in American mid terms. Only two parties are allowed to win. We're not all Americans in this world (or Russian spies, extraterrestrials in meat suits or active Freemasons.)

I've been critical of those on here too.

That country's problem as I just said is that it is run by robber barons. As is Russia.

It shouldn't be ruled by a sockpuppet of Russia or the West. (Oh look, I just used the definite article and a capital letter. Nooo!) Neither of those options are independence. Maybe your mates at Central casting don't agree.

I support Ukrainian independence.

That said most Soviet successor states (including Russia) are run by robber barons.

No idea what "ninja editing" is, but perhaps you know what "snitch jacketing" is? That's when you start making insinuations about people because you disagree with them. Almost as pathetic as accusing them of being bots.

Unfortunately it doesn't stop there.

This is why people need to meet in person even more. We do have a public square and it's outside and offline.

I got shadow banned on Duolingo forums for questioning why a billion dollar company was not paying some of the people who helped develop their language courses.

We barely get indie anything online now. We have fake indy outlets like Buzzfeed and Vice, but blogs are excluded from search results. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes carry some public reviews but even they are being deprioritised for AI summaries.

There is unfortunately a lot more to it than that.

There has been a significant amount of dehumanisation of disabled people in the British mass media and by some politicians, and talking about them as a "drain on society".

Remember not only are many disabled people taxpayers (or former taxpayers), but they are also the relatives, neighbours and friends of taxpayers.

My father met Jonathan many decades ago. Jonathan has outlived him by quite some margin.

I'd like to see Ascension Island too, but it is apparently quite restricted.