mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/02/2025they're mainly sucking up to the trump administration and its tech oligarchy, but they probably do largely believe some of this nonsense. anyway, ironically, we gave europe £8 million the other week to play with the supercomputers. 010
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/02/2025if the government's going to shove unregulated robots into everything, then, on past performance, the big growth sector will be public inquiries. 121
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 26/01/2025maybe I'm weird, but I do not want a robot that will, in ten years time, read too much into the twenty-odd tweets I wrote about Rory Stewart annoying me this afternoon. I expect that I'll be wholly capable of doing that myself. 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 26/01/2025decades from now, you would be better off reading about the history of crypto marketing and going to therapy if you're still that hung up on it. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 26/01/2025this would not enlighten you, because you are not an atomised individual explainable by the excerpts of thoughts that you choose - for whatever reason - to put out into the world. you are susceptible to external influence and you can't put your brain in a status update. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 26/01/2025oh look, it's the tech fetishist crossover episode from hell 131
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/01/2025obviously meant "supreme court", oops. 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/01/2025and still the commentariat act like Starmer is a paragon of the rule of law who just really wanted to be AG. fantasy land stuff. 110
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/01/2025an intervention premissed in part on an argument that a £30 billion or so award would undermine confidence in uk regulation. and an announcement that boosted the most exposed lender's value by 4%. oh, and she sacked the head of the CMA for not indulging her regulatory capture. 111
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 23/01/2025this is in the same week when it's reported that she's intervening in the supreme cour to argue for lower compensation to people who have been mis-sold car finance. this lot are cartoonishly corrupt. 141
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025"too big to fail" but it's about a plutocracy. 011
Reposted by @mcdivergence.bsky.socialEuan @euan.bsky.social · 22/01/2025wow so Starmer has fully banned any criticism of the Trump administration then 1248
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025I'm drawing some negative inferences from their position here, ngl. prepare for post office scandal part 2: electric boogaloo. anyway, they're more broadly living on cloud cuckoo land. 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025the big money ticket for ai companies is ultimately going to be shoving chatbots at everyone and feasting on government contracts. to deliver these sorts of things, that the uk government is reluctant to make rules about - a fact that it claims as a selling point. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025(it's mainly about high risk systems, there's also some things that are banned and some obligations regarding all systems, but) it's not even that they disagree with the particularities afaict. labour have walked back on their pledge to legislate and are largely doing a wait-and-see thing. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025Annex III. ai is the only thing they mention in the article where they want to go their own way to attract investment. investment in, um, judicial robots with sloppy rules? 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 22/01/2025just gonna note that the bulk of the high risk ai system functions that are the focus of the eu's ai act are public sector functions. so it's really themselves that the government are opposed to regulating. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 21/01/2025that last bit is absurd. it'll all be grand because Vance will want to punt him? 010
Reposted by @mcdivergence.bsky.socialThe Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 20/01/2025Half-expected Biden to preemptively pardon Greenland and Panama. 237740
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 20/01/2025this might be because I'm paying more attention to people talking about it. but what is a chicken and what is an egg? (I think it's both) 010
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 20/01/2025only slight, bc the reason it's being talked about a lot more is that it's going to get a lot worse. yay. 110
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 20/01/2025something of a silver lining of trump buddying up with musk that America's long-standing and quite disturbing control over the entire internet seems to now be something that's being talked about a lot more. slight shred of optimism ig. 110
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 09/01/2025I can excuse bigotry, but I draw the line at unparliamentary language. 011
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 09/01/2025Facebook's new terms of service allow you to be as transphobic as you like, but you can't call someone a liar. They have modelled them off the House of Commons. 172
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 24/12/2024think you'll find it's "woah-oh" actually. 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 24/12/2024in: hokey cokey out: hokey cokey (also out: where I shall see myself) 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 17/12/2024Labour ministers would steal the shirt off your back and tell you to ask John Swinney to buy you a new one. 02610
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 03/12/2024give me strength www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/2476847...glasgowtimes.co.ukSusan Aitken and Anas Sarwar in row over Glasgow by election blunderA row has broken out between Susan Aitken and Anas Sarwar over the blunder that means a council by-election must be re-run. 011
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 03/12/2024a Scottish Labour drama, in three acts: 141
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 01/12/2024real change is when you need a by-election to fix the by-election. 020
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 20/11/2024intra-UK trade would simply crumble in the face of a caramac 010
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 20/11/2024and it will all be blocked by the internal market act 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 19/11/2024they're definitely going to get hmrc to deliver a scheme that claws back £15 for every £1k over around four and half times the average pensioner income. this will definitely not cost more to administer than it claws back. (they won't, and it would) 031
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 19/11/2024this is what is known as having concepts of plan. 151
Reposted by @mcdivergence.bsky.socialMallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 13/11/2024This is a really poor decision on the part of Labour. Kishwer Falkner, a plant of the Tory Party originally, has worked to undermine human rights in the United Kingdom since was appointed chief of the EHRC - our main human rights and equality watchdog. 1721982
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024but the point in connection to this thread is that many of the devices deployed by the right are hollowed out signifiers that appeal to the authority of the establishment and institutions. which, yes, is quite ironic. actual end. probably. 000
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024(yes, I am talking about Keir Starmer and his made-up threat to national security, but this is a very Europe Thing rn too). in this way, they abuse the law as a guise for undermining legal rights. there are many other examples of this. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024so they use the rhetorical device of "illegality" to justify using non-statutory means of undermining that right through securitisation and the pretence that they're "going after smugglers." they construct a facade of illegality to undermine the law, because it's about xenophobia, not law. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024in so doing, they socio-culturally expand the law to criminalise legal forms of migration as a pretext for undermining access to the legal right to claim asylum. they're restrained from doing this through the law because of prevailing norms and/of international law. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024another point on this bit is that "illegal" isn't even solely used to describe the law, but also to expand it socially and culturally. uk politicians talk about legal asylum seekers as "illegal immigrants/immigration." bsky.app/profile/mcdi... 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024anyway. this is an essay. but yay! first post(s) in blue-sky. start (ranting) as I mean to go on ig. end. 110
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024you can see this in the way that "college educated elite" isn't actually applied exclusively to graduates nor rich people. the people who talk about this would probably count this thread as an example of that class, and I don't have a degree. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024(for uk audiences, to not include nigel farage and the telegraph/times/daily mail/gb news cadre of oxbridge grads). it's highly confected political theatre to retrench capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, nationalist hegemonic ideals. framed in terms of class, to which it has no connection. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024they only see the class of political and media graduates using these terms because they do not engage with any working class people who disagree with them. the political and media graduate class is also framed selectively to not include donald trump and fox news presenters. 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024this is using the performance of punching up (at the purported college educated elite) in order to punch down (at undocumented migrants who they *explicitly want to deport en masse*). it's the same playbook as "elite pronouns [we want to ban trans healthcare]" 100
mcdivergence.bsky.social @mcdivergence.bsky.social · 14/11/2024they perform that backlash with rhetoric designed to make themselves sympathetic. the challenge comes from an academic and media elite, claim the president and richest man in the world. how very alienating of the working class that we're exploiting, economically and politically. 100
