All hail the Torment Nexus. We really are living in a sci-fi dystopia.

Thank you, @qasimrashid.com 🙏

Its a hell of a lot more convenient for book banners to delete stuff from a server than it is for them to get hold of physical copies.

Never mind the Pope, there are some who would say something similar about *Jesus*. I've said it before, MAGA is fundamentally a new religious movement crawling out of the old.

Putting aside everything else, you've got to wonder if Reform threatening to jail people for making a false claim would actually turn out to be more expensive.

(Not that it matters, because most of the media and political class just want to give immigrants a kicking.)

"We have allocated £1.5 billion dollars of the defence budget for the purchase of unidentifiable meat. Our contractor has confirmed it contains less than 5% human DNA."

That's the thing, the current mess we're in is fundamentally rooted in a religious fervour, its just that most commentators don't look beyond MAGA Evangelicals to all the magical thinking and transhumanism.

"In an unexpected development, writer Gail Simone was today made US ambassador to Khandaq. The country, which does not technically appear to exist, is considered vital to the president's Iranian strategy. Simone refused to comment on whether the news was 'fakey or a true'."

Years ago, I wrote a blog post on Tarantino's use of a fake Bible verse in Pulp Fiction. Yesterday I noticed that my stats had gone through the (admittedly pretty low) roof.

What I'm saying is... thanks for the traffic, Pete!

I mean, I'm sure there must be something in the Just War doctrine about bombing schools and hospitals that the Pope may have missed. Probably next to a bit about inadvertently inflicting economic hardship on the rest of the planet.

Well, of course. I mean, a thug like Tate couldn't have written Sandman,dammit!

And politicians wonder why, when they talk about "benefit reform", many people become even more terrified.

Yes, but he was the cool, sensitive, progressive wing of terrible men who treat women appallingly, the one who talked about art and fairy tales and stuff. He's not like the *other* terrible men who treat women appallingly.

I want a series where the Pope fights crimes and solves murders on the mean streets of Vatican City.

"The only person who can take my badge is God Himself, Chief. And you ain't God!"

Is AI the greatest art heist in history? New technologies of reproduction are plundering the art world – and getting away with it

"We are replaced by digital homunculi, trained on our stolen creations. And no, the work is not good, but that scarcely matters. Generative AI is a tool to discipline, then eliminate, the human worker. The audience will just have to get used to it. This is sold as progress," writes Molly Crabapple.

Because they see the rest of the world (and possibly most of their own population) as NPC's who are just there to enact the Trumpian narrative. Once everyone starts demonstrating agency and self-determination, it freaks them out because no-one's playing by The Rules.

What the hell.

This whole situation is almost designed to elicit trauma through ongoing anxiety, uncertainty and sudden changes of circumstance, putting our lizard brains in the driving seat. The only way to get through this is through self-care and looking after one another, working toward mutual flourishing.

So, gaming the markets and leaving millions of people across the world in an ongoing, trauma-inducing state of uncertainty and anxiety. Same time next Tuesday?

Its almost as if "Move fast and break things" isn't the ideal way to run society.

I'm the daughter of an Army paratrooper who refused orders during our illegal invasion of Vietnam back in the day. He went to LBJ military jail.

Dad taught his girls this: "Just following orders" is NEVER any excuse for anyone who's complicit in war crimes. You MUST refuse heinous orders.

Maybe if they got jobs at a supermarket, someone could call them in to deal with an emergency.

Because America's got itself a king and a bunch of people lining up to do his bidding. Its a weird situation where millions of people can imagine him dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran or invading Greenland, but no-one can imagine actually being able to stop him.

Can we just fast-forward to the bit when everyone pretends they were always against this madness and that they were all on holiday whole it was happening?

Yeah, yeah, everyone thinks he's crazy. Except if/when he gives the order to Invade Greenland (and therefore the EU), is anyone going to refuse to do it?

Fascinating thread, which raises the questions from both sides of the debate: what happens when a) we're deliberately encouraged to distrust experts but b) have an information ecosystem that promotes inaccurate information that gets in the way of the public being informed across a range of subjects?

The only conclusion is that enough people on both sides of the aisle are okay with that, and war crimes, and disappearing people to prison. And frankly, from a distance, that's what scares me more about the US than the rantings of an 80 year old: that people are making those rantings a reality.

Its no surprise that Trump is doing something venal and insane. Its the service members following orders to commit war crimes that terrify me. Trump himself isn't pressing the launch button.

I wish more people understood the terror disabled people face when dealing with housing insecurity, poverty and unsafe caregivers.

Many in the community are forced to rely on abusive people for survival.

It shouldn’t be this way.

We desperately need more support & resources.