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Tom King

@tallgeekychap.bsky.social

440 followers 470 following 1.9K posts

Seeking a future that isn't the end-point of where we are. I believe in a more generous society: generoussociety.com Political consultant running a small firm after many years of working for others.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Many people are saying the BBC's news values are a bit skew-whiff.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 8h

Quite remarkable that a person can write an entire book about liberalism without knowing if the right to family life is a human right, and the consequences that ought to hold for a liberal policy on asylum and migration.

Reposted by Tom King

Alan Greene @alangreene.bsky.social · 9h

In the UK, we have a government who will complain about peaceful protests taking up valuable police resources while simultaneously complaining that the police shouldn't ban far right football hooligans with a history of violence and disruption from attending a match.

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Reposted by Tom King

Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 9h

How has the government got itself into the position of standing up for Israeli football hooligans, while criminalising peaceful supporters of Palestine Action?

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Reposted by Tom King

Nash @radiodeadair.com · 23h

BY THE WAY

If you've updated to Windows 11 recently, you're probably on version 25H2.

There's a new setting in Settings: Privacy & Security.

Scroll aaaaaaaalll the way to the bottom and you'll see "Text and Image Generation."

TURN IT OFF.

Screenshot from Windows Settings>Privacy and Security>Text and image Generation.

"Text and image generation uses on-device AI technologies to quickly respond to requests. Turning this settings off will not affect apps and features using cloud AI technologies.

Text and image generation
Windows and anyone using this device can use Text and image generation.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed! Mostly because senior Labour MPs kept coming out and saying it couldn't work and the party should just go into opposition.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

This BBC timeline, meanwhile, suggests Labour were offering to put AV into law and then hold a confirmatory referendum on it. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_poli...

BBC News - Election 2010 Timeline: How coalition was agreed

news.bbc.co.uk

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

The article contradicts itself at the bottom by suggesting they offered moving to AV for the Commons without a referendum, and a further referendum on STV/PR.

Basically the Lab position was never actually clear because the numbers never allowed for a deal in the first place.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Nah. If they offered anything it was legislation for a referendum on AV (which is the same as what the Tories then offered).

From here: www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

The Lib Dems would obviously have killed for 22% of the seats. They had 23% of the vote and under 9% of the seats.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Many people are saying the BBC's news values are a bit skew-whiff.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Is it perhaps time to recognise that the number of politicians active in the UK (or, I suspect, anywhere else) with a genuine deeply held set of ideological principles built on any intellectual tradition is... extremely tiny? It would be quicker to name the ones you think *do* have it.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

High-level 'reckons' breach

Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 2d

Not really the main point for these witnesses statements but this is unbelievably low grade stuff to be passing on.

Tugendhat did not in fact get a cabinet job and Jeremy Hunt endorsed Rishi Sunak. Did the Chinese realise how crap all this intelligence was?

Reposted by Tom King

Duncan Hothersall @dhothersall.bsky.social · 1d

It's really telling that mainstream journalists are doing stuff about the *possibility* of the ADF or the Heritage Foundation starting to influence UK politics, when the reality is that they have been here for years, spending huge quantities of cash and succeeding in areas like trans rights.

The News Agents @newsagents.bsky.social · 2d

"The ADF has chosen Nigel Farage to focus on, building up this ally who has the potential to be a JD Vance-like figure in the future."

Can the Christian group that influenced the overturning of Roe v. Wade bring its extreme views to the UK?

www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/is-n...

Is Nigel Farage being used as a pawn by US Christian extremists? | The News Agents

A New York Times report suggests Nigel Farage is being backed by Alliance Defending Freedom – a conservative Christian group dedicated to rolling back rights of many groups in the US. What does this…

www.thenewsagents.co.uk

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 1d

Sinners is the only out and out fun film on that list.

The Departed is decent but insubstantial.

No Country for Old Men is the most tense.

There Will Be Blood is the best drama.

Killers of the Flower Moon is overlong, harrowing, and uneven.

Gangs of New York is doggerel.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 2d

I urge you to read Technopoly by Neil Postman, if you haven't before. And then if you want something to really get your teeth into, Golumbia's Cyberlibertarianism.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 4d

This is straight-up bullshit - Lib Dems almost universally loathe party lists, and bow to no one in their nerdy stanning of the single transferable vote.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 4d

That doesn't mean it definitely *will* happen everywhere in the same way, but the assumption really should be that it might, and that if we don't want that, we have to do something else beyond what we were doing.

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 4d

I just find it really weird that at this point in our shared history people are still going, 'nah, that would never happen', despite visible evidence pretty much everywhere that it is already happening, and very limited new efforts to collectively stop it happening.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 4d

Wasabi (it's just the wrong kind of spicy for me, I'm afraid)
Possession (1981) - once is enough
Happy (Pharrell) - just awful

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 6d

Introduce yourself using only one food you refuse to eat, one movie you’ll never watch again, and one song you can’t stand

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 4d

Just a ton of people who think 'passive voice' is the same as 'obfuscating language', mostly confused by reports of 'officer-involved shootings' per your example.

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Reposted by Tom King

🦇🤘 Rigg-or mortis 🔶️🏳️‍🌈 @rigg.lgbt · 4d

It's bloody exhausting living in grief and fear.

🧵⤵️

Grief because I used to be a citizen of a continent and now I'm trapped on a little island.

Fear because the vast majority of the media and political establishment in the UK are hell-bent on removing the human rights of my loved ones.

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 7d

Labour are incapable of treating people with dignity and sensitivity, because their conception of how society and policy work relies on humans being no more than interchangeable units.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Government to consult on digital IDs for 13-year-olds

There has been a backlash to the announcement a UK-wide digital ID scheme will be introduced by 2029.

www.bbc.co.uk

Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 9d

Today in "you'll never guess what this is a response to"

magatsrpedos.bsky.social @magatsrpedos.bsky.social · 10d

We humans have lost so much do to Christianity. We have lost our ability to respect other lives, we've lost our ability to understand the other lives on this planet.

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Reposted by Tom King

Toby Earle 🇺🇦 @tobyontv.bsky.social · 9d

if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees

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Tom King @tallgeekychap.bsky.social · 9d

Anyone who was at any point on a relatively busy discussion forum at any time in the early 2000s knows this first-hand from observing how moderation tended to develop and then be questioned by the more trollish posters.

The ppl who run social media weren't there because they don't like discussion.

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