‘…a prominent public company said this out loud AND EXPECTED PRAISE FOR IT.’

The responses to this are a joy.

Oh so annoying. And the ones who then go on to ‘Nad-gee’. Grrr

Puis-je vous demander de faire mes devoirs aussi?

two women sitting next to each other with the hashtag #schittscreek Alt: two women, one looking smug and proudly pushing back her hair, with the hashtag #schittscreek

One of the few times I was fast enough of my feet!

🤯

Absolutely.

‘I’m sure you are right’ = everyone’s favourite thing to hear! 💪💪💪

Most often ‘being difficult’ is applied to women. In a job interview once I was told that it was a position in which I’d have to ‘fight my corner’, and then asked about a reputation for being ‘abrasive’.
Me: *smiling sweetly* I prefer to think of it as fighting my corner.

Also, having spent nearly two decades being an editor myself, I am very pro-editing.

No, he was actually a really good editor. He just found the idea bizarre.

He was a joy to edit. So invested in every word. And it was a fabulous education for me.

When I reviewed Spamalot I wrote that Tim Curry was the single most charismatic actor I had ever seen. The editor changed it to ‘in this production’.
Me: No. That I have EVER seen.
Editor: …

Which translation? I edited David McDuff’s translation for Penguin and I thought he was terrific in showing just how *weird* Dostoyevsky’s prose is. (At least so he explained it to me: my Russian is at the ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ level.)

The problem with tech bros is that they sound like smart people to idiots

Calling @niedermeyer.online , emergency in aisle 6, Mr @niedermeyer.online …

The USA: *bombs babies* *gov’t agents kidnap and murder on the street*

The USA’s ‘paper of record’: Don’t say ‘crap’, people will be offended!

Finland began trials on alleviating homelessness c30 years ago, showing positive results from the start. The rest of the world looked on and

It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing. Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.

Healthy accountability is triggered by evidence, points upward at power, and happens in public. Disordered accountability protects insiders and aims its punishment outward. What the document does is argue for the second while calling it the first.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
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For those who live in heathen climes where squash is unknown, this bears no relation to orange juice. It is a concentrate, comes in a bottle, and you dilute it 1 part squash to about 5 parts water, until it is a cloudy, vaguely yellowish colour and tastes like the ghost of fruit long deceased.

Irish equivalent. My friend’s mother and her girl gang (all in their 90s) stopped going to the local hotel for Sunday lunch when they stopped getting free orange squash* refills. The hotel hastily backed down and they huffily returned.

I have serious resting bitch face, but what am I gonna do when a small child next to me on the subway leans over and points to my New Yorker, shouting ‘chickens!’ at a cartoon. Why yes, I’m gonna count chickens with her. After counting we’ll move on to doing our colours. There are worse subway rides

Interesting piece, but *pssst* @rollingstone.com, that is NOT what Morton's fork means. (It's where 2 opposite & mutually exclusive situations produce the same result, à la Bishop Morton: 'You live so well, you can afford the king's tax'/'You live so frugally, you can afford the king's tax'.)

Would they notice?

Alternative headline: Western men angered to discover women they date have no desire to be their mothers.

The good part about this story is that John Roberts can live knowing that, until the end of days, no one will walk past the grave of this polite, charming man without spitting.

I just can't imagine how the scam works. I mean, by definition, authors know how to read. And most know what Margaret Atwood looks like (top tip: not a blonde 50-something-year-old with an influencer-mom bob).