The Infamous Grouse

The Infamous Grouse

@infamousgrouse.net

World-weary 50-something British geek, still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

110 followers265 following234 posts

@mrjamesob.bsky.social (1/3) Orwell's 1984 is often quoted on your show, most notably in the context of trusting the evidence of your own eyes and ears, or the refugee newsreel. But for me this has always been the key paragraph when it comes to answering "Why?" and "How?" questions around behaviour.

(2/3) Certain politicians and client media have relentlessly fuelled Two Decades' Hate, cycling the target from immigrants to the disabled to single parents to LGBTQ to climate scientists to civil servants to academics... To today, when a million blowlamps can be steered at once with a single meme.

(3/3) And now a crowd cheers as a woman is dragged and kicked and struck with a walking stick by a rage-fuelled pensioner. As Orwell said in an earlier paragraph, "The horrible thing [...] was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in."

I had a grim realisation this weekend. Niemöller's "First They Came" is only a warning for those who can imagine being the Communists, or the trade unionists, or the Jews, or ultimately the narrator. But there are others who only imagine being "They." And for them it's not a warning. It's a plan.

“Erm… guys, does anyone else feel as though we’re in the middle of a literal dystopian science-fiction metaphor? Like we should maybe stop for a second and think abou…” “You’re not paid to think. Shut up, bring in the next batch of books and pass the de-spining knife. The machine must be fed.”

theguardian.comWhy is Anthropic destroying books? | Kathryn JamesThe AI company apparently found destructively scanning ‘all the books in the world’ easier than dealing with copyright in its quest for training data

The Travelling Wildberries.

Kyiv Post@kyivpost.com

Ukraine’s drone strikes are forcing Russia’s largest marketplace, Wildberries, to look beyond Russia. The company is reportedly seeking warehouse space in Kazakhstan after repeated attacks on its logistics hubs. www.kyivpost.com/post/81301

The new Apple Devices app, a replacement for iTunes on Windows, takes 30 minutes to do complete a backup then reports that it couldn't start the backup it just completed. Never change, Apple. You set the standard for visually slick but shitty Windows apps, and nobody should ever take that crown.

The Infamous Grouse reposted

Your dog is sure to love Old Trusty Tit-Bits, especially when mixed with Old Trusty Climax! — a granulated food of the very highest order mentioned in The Old Trusty Dog Book, 1930 #dogs #food #vintage #anriques #ohmy

We've been wondering where Charles might find common ground over which to have a chinwag with Trump, and here it is: suppressing the growth of an immigrant population in favour of the indigenous. Donald will love it, as long as he doesn’t realise who the immigrants are. Make Arboreals Great Again.

YouGov@yougov.co.uk

With King Charles making a donation to a charity working to reduce the grey squirrel population in the UK by making them infertile, 42% of Britons would also back this approach (vs 31% opposed) yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

Can't use scissors without injury. Too daft to keep spare batteries in a more convenient container. Angry at a theoretical parent they just invented in their head. Has no problem with a child choking. I'd say Daily Mail reader but the spelling and punctuation is too good. Telegraph?

The Infamous Grouse reposted

See that planet in the distance? That’s us. ALL of us. Every living being we are aware of lives there. We are completely alone, floating in the great abyss of dark, infinite space. Life like ours is incredibly rare - perhaps even without precedent - in the Universe. All we have is each other… 1/

(1/2) I have friends and family who might benefit from listening to this but the attack on Farage at the end, however legitimate, makes it futile. These people LOVE Farage and as soon as they hear the last few seconds they'll dismiss the whole prior three minutes as "leftist wokery" or something.

Jack dart@jackdart.bsky.social

The media has convinced you that Keir Starmer is the worst Prime Minister in history. They're lying to you.

(2/2) Pointing people in the direction of facts and letting them draw their own conclusions has a small chance of working, but attacking their golden idol will make most of them double down. I've seen it too often. The video is spot on, but it will not change minds that are already part of the cult.

Wrong files, Donny.

CNN@cnn.com

President Donald Trump said he would direct the Pentagon and other government agencies to release government records related to extraterrestrial life and UFOs. https://cnn.it/406291P

The Infamous Grouse reposted

Leading Reform politician Nadhim Zahawi spoke today of an horrific encounter with a man who looked tired and threatening, and who typified the dystopian nightmare that is Broken Britain… From the new Private Eye, out now.

🧵

Margaret Killjoy@margaret.bsky.social

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

It seems as though there’s always a #Babylon5 reference these days, @straczynski.bsky.social’s gift for prophecy being proven increasingly and disturbingly on-point. (I understand the toy store folks are pushing back legally. Good luck to them).

Minnesota Star Tribune@startribune.com

Mischief Toy Store in St. Paul has until Wednesday to turn over employment records to the Department of Homeland Security as part of a surprise audit launched Friday, just hours after one of the shop's owners criticized ICE agents during a television interview. bit.ly/4r5AFol

In this mad timeline in which #Babylon5 is a playbook and not a warning, we are now deep in the "Point Of No Return" phase. Next we find out who in the military is prepared to follow illegal orders. And if we get to "Severed Dreams", that's when the President orders the bombing of civilian targets.

washingtonpost.comPentagon readies 1,500 soldiers to possibly deploy to Minnesota, officials sayTroops with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division in Alaska are preparing after President Donald Trump’s Insurrection Act threat, according to defense officials.