Technically it can be, since PEMDAS is not an immutable law, it’s convention so we can communicate maths and come to the same answer.

The copy of the web browser is mine, the data I’ve downloaded is mine, I can do what I want with it.

Sure if you want to broaden the definition to “anything that has ever been animated in Japan ever” then sure they’ve been doing anime for decades, but the stuff we would colloquially call ‘anime’ generally kicked off after the war, inspired by American culture. The signature ‘anime’ style is directly inspired by Disney cartoons, and it wasn’t even called anime until the 60s.

I mean… It was essentially the occupation that did it. The Americans effectively colonised Japan after the war, wiping away the previous culture and going “No, you believe THIS now. You get to keep the Emperor because I’m feeling nice, but if there’s a part of your culture I don’t like, I’m getting rid of it whether you like it or not”.

…Turns out there was quite a lot of Japanese culture at the time that needed wiping out, and the Americans were very effective at doing it.

It’s kinda interesting how two different approaches to conquering ex-authoritarian states concluded. In Germany, it was all about collective guilt and confronting the German people about the holocaust. In Japan? Not so much. They kinda just swept all those atrocities under the rug with a “That was the old me! This is the new me, right? I did what you wanted Mr America! I’m on your side now!”. Maybe it was the fact that Japan was conquered wholesale by the US and could be put together as a more cohesive front against the Communist Chinese, whereas Germany was split into two and needed to be kept in line to avoid any grumblings about being Communist?

It’s funnier than that because in one of the hadiths it says, to quote:

“Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said, “The prayer of a person who does Hadath (passes urine, stool or wind) is not accepted till he performs the ablution.” A person from Hadaramout asked Abu Huraira, “What is ‘Hadath’?” Abu Huraira replied, " ‘Hadath’ means the passing of wind.”"

““The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was asked about a man who felt something during his prayer – should he stop praying? He said, ‘No, not unless you hear a sound or detect an odour.’””

So if you let out one of those silent farts that don’t smell, it doesn’t count.

Technically touching pork breaks your Wudu, but so does farting so it’s not a huge deal, you just need to wash your hands afterwards.

I mean… It’s not being turned off. You can still use Windows 10 if you want to, it’s just Microsoft don’t want to keep pushing security updates to it, and they’re like “Well if you want continued security updates you’re gonna have to sign in and pay for them”.

You can always go without those updates.

There’s a term for that, it’s called being voluntold to do something.

Ironic that a guy who facilitates large amounts of piracy is complaining about violating license agreements.

If only they could have that response when the TERFs come knocking. When normal people want something good they’re like “lol no get fucked losers” but when JK Rowling comes along they’re like “Of course mistress anything you want do you want a viewing box at the gas chambers?”

That’s because 90% of cryptocurrency marketing consists of “THINK OF THE GAAAAAAINS YOU CAN MAKE!” instead of “You can use this to buy things without government censorship”.

The entire crypto industry has based itself around being a speculative asset, not a currency.

Israel is unpopular, but Israel is not the end-all be-all of British politics.

According to YouGov (admittedly from 2024 but the Gaza War had already kicked off by then), the top 3 issues people vote on are…

For Labour Voters:

• Cost of Living
• Health
• The Economy

When asked what the single most important thing is, the most said Cost of Living

For Conservative Voters:

• Immigration
• The Economy
• Cost of Living

When asked what the most important thing is, the most said Immigration

For Reform Voters:

• Immigration
• Cost of Living
• The Economy

When asked what the most important thing is, the most said Immigration.

For the Lib Dems:

• Health
• Cost of Living
• The Economy

When asked what the most important thing is, the most said Health.

There’s nothing on the Green Party because they’re so irrelevant nobody even counts them.

Of the entire population surveyed, the total percentage of people that considered Gaza to be their highest priority was 2%, and of those 2%, the most were in the 18-24 age bracket at 14%.

Admittedly I may be reading that data wrong, and it is from 2024, but this is more current, and on that list, Israel vs Palestine isn’t even counted because it’s so low in priority. While yes, Israel is unpopular, in the grand scheme of things and the issues facing the UK right now, nobody gives a shit about Gaza.

Yes, there needs to be a more leftist party in UK politics, but… for christ’s sake don’t make Gaza your primary messaging. There’s a ton of shit going on in the UK right now and Reform are ahead in the polls. Guess what Reform are not talking about? It’s Gaza, because it turns out the average twat from the run-down northern town with no job prospects and a dying welfare state doesn’t actually give a shit enough to want his government’s priorities to be on another nation state when HE’S getting fucked from all sides.

Start your messaging about un-fucking the UK first, and then mention Gaza when asked. It’s about being seen as “We’re here for YOU” and then when asked about Gaza going “Oh yes we care about that as well, but YOU are the priority”, hence the name Your Party.

In other words, a blog post.

Maybe you could limit the number of verifications a key can have in a day? Limit it to say 10 verifications per day. So if you’re on Pornhub and have an account, you can have the key associated with the account, verified, and so you don’t need to re-verify. But if you go on 10 completely different sites and verify for each one, you can’t verify after that 10th one within the same 24hr period?

You could maybe also include guidelines for integration where if a key is associated with an account, that key can’t be used for any other account. You can include that under some requirement that says you have to make ‘best efforts’ to ensure that a key is only ever used by one account at a time. That way, if a million people are sharing the same key, you’d have to trust that all one million of them will never associate that key with their account because if they do, it invalidates that key for every use other than through that account on that site.

Yeah I did consider that people are going to share keys, but people are going to share accounts too so that’s always going to happen. The best thing you can do is stick some safeguards on the keys where if a key is found online, it can be deactivated and potentially investigated since you can tell which shop sold the key. If there’s a shop out there just giving cards away to minors, well they’re in for a world of trouble.

Under the Licensing Act of 2003, it’s illegal to sell alcohol to an adult if you reasonably suspect that they will be then giving that alcohol to a minor. You can assume the same will apply to people selling Wank Cards.

Hm, I’m going to need some software engineers to critique an idea I have that could at least partially solve the fears people have about their personal details being tied to their porn habits.

The system will be called the Adult Content Verification System (or Wank Card if you want to be funny). It’s a physical card, printed by the government with a unique key printed on it. Those cards are then sold by any shop that has an alcohol license (premises or personal). You go in, show your ID to the clerk, buy the card. That card is proof that you’re over 18, but it is not directly tied to you, you just have to be over 18 to buy it. The punishment for selling a Wank Card to someone under the age of 18 is the same as if you sold alcohol to someone under 18.

When you go to the porn site, they check if you’re from the UK, they check if you have a key associated with your account. If not, they ask for one, you provide the key to the site, the site does an API call to https://wankcard.gov.uk/api/verify with the site’s API key (freely generated, but you could even make the api public if you want) and the key on the card, gets a response saying “Yep! This is a valid key!” and hey presto, free to wank and nobody knows it’s you! If you don’t have an account, the verification would have to be tied to a cookie or something that disappears after a while for all you anonymous people.

As a result, you can both prove that you’re over 18 (because you have the card) and some company over in San Francisco doesn’t get your personal data, because you never actually record it anywhere. All you have is keys, and while yes, the government could record “Oh this key was used to verify on this site”, they’d have to know which shop the key was bought from, who sold it, and who bought it, which is a lot more difficult to do unless the shopkeeper keeps records of everyone he’s ever sold to.

So… Good idea? Bad idea? Better than the current approach anyway, I think.

I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn’t gonna judge you, an AI isn’t gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It’s giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.

Funny, humanity contributing to the reduction of the climate crisis by increasing the number of ticks causing people to become allergic to meat, meaning less demand for meat, meaning less greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere as cattle becomes less profitable.

NATO isn’t gonna defend Taiwan or Iran. The US will defend Taiwan, Russia will defend Iran. NATO has no interest in either. NATO will defend Canada and Greenland as best they can.