Notices by The Dread Slender Gnome (gnomeshatecheese@spinster.xyz), page 7

@KeepTakingTheSoma We just keep on cycling back to that canard over and over again, don't we?

@KeepTakingTheSoma Exactly. And one should never stop making the case for such freedoms, even when they already have been won.

@KeepTakingTheSoma I've also been thinking about Europe's long march away from state-sanctioned religious reverence.

Just the other day I was contemplating how the general consensus used to be that blasphemy laws are archaic nonsense, and how that really was not that long ago. I mean I personally remember campaigns against blasphemy laws and how getting rid of them was considered a major victory for modern, civil society.

And now we're right back at "you're OFFENDING people's BELIEFS how DARE you".

I mean, seriously.

If I'm allowed to burn, tear, or convert to compost a phone book, I see no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to do the exact same to a "holy" book.

You think a book is "holy"? Fine, YOU revere it as much as you want. But that has nothing to do with what I do or don't do.

@HebrideanHecate Honestly, I'd be one of those people who would happily "desecrate" a holy book in public to make a point. And if, say dumping holy books in a bin in public was illegal, I would be glad to do so as a protest against the stupid law.

Although for it to be really effective, you'd have to have a crowd of people participating in the act of protest.

Commentary on the "let's outlaw blasphemy" question in the UK Parliament and freedom of expression issues in general, by a barrister. (Sponsorship for approximately 4:50-6:50)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAnWsuqofrs

Main disagreement: I honestly don't understand this idea that destroying a religious text is somehow a horrible thing to do. It's a book. Squiggles printed on paper. It's ridiculous to claim that any particular selection and order of the squiggles makes destroying the book somehow horrible, while destroying another compilation of squiggles on paper is perfectly fine.

@Flick @ninapaley Ok, I tried running my VPN through U.S., after clearing the relevant cookies, and it still wouldn't work.

I'm not sure whether that should make a difference if the problem was location. If so, it might be useful if someone who actually is in states tried to find the fabric on Spoonflower.

@ninapaley For some reason that just automatically redirects me to the main Spoonflower page. Even pasting your link as is didn't work.

Searching "recovery gloves Nina Paley" (or any permutation) just gives loads of results with baseball mitts.

I don't know. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I'll try google, sometimes it works better.

@ninapaley These are so cool.

Could you maybe post a direct link to the fabric at Spoonflower? I tried searching for the fabric, but for some reason couldn't find it on their site.

@ninapaley @Flick Btw, if I buy the fabric, do you get some income out of it?

@ninapaley @Flick Yep, works for me too!

I guess it's a good thing I complained. 😆

@HebrideanHecate Right, here's one of their clips on this.
Describes the reasons behind knife attacks on kindergardens and middle schools. In short: it's a way to hurt society and the elder generation.
Also shows an ad for a kindergarden containing footage of an attack drill.

https://youtu.be/0UfAvx-YBfs

@HebrideanHecate Apparently stabbing attacks against children are a "thing" in China.
According to these two youtubers I follow, it's a very China-specific way of disaffected men (of whom China has plenty) to attack against society. I can see if I can dig up a video where they discuss this, but if I remember right, the impetus is not just that one-child-policy families put massive resources into their single children, but also the importance of children as carriers of family name and providers for their parents.

It's enough of a thing, that daycare workers and school teachers run drills on what to do in case of a knife attack, and facilities have all kinds of security measures in place to stop would-be attackers.

@HebrideanHecate Isn't it just.

And one of those things you'd never know about, unless you go out of your way to learn stuff about modern China. Everyone talks about U.S. school shootings, but Chinese kindergarten stabbings might as well not exist.

@HebrideanHecate Funny familial anecdote time:

My half-brother went to study in the Soviet Union when he was young. I don't think he ever was a real communist of anything, but back then the opportunity was there and he took it.
When he left, he was a vegetarian, because of course he was.
However, apparently the only (!) easily available vegetable over there was cabbage.

After a couple of months, he was very effectively cured of vegetarianism.

@HebrideanHecate Politically motivated free passes have been around for a long while.
In the 70s there was a type of student who thought the Soviet Union could do no wrong. Free paradise of peacenik workers, dontchaknow. And that's just a fresh example I was reminded of because of the stuff I've been reading lately.

@HebrideanHecate Ah, slipped my mind, that.

My bad, as the kids say these days.

@FeartnTired This video isn’t strictly about the bottle return scheme, but about waste management in Finland in general. It’s from the environmental centre, and kind of advertis-y, but I have no reason to suspect they’re misrepresenting basic facts.

A coupld of take-aways, which aren’t explicitly stated in the video, but are a clear subtext.
One, these are very complicated systems that involve a lot of different laws and rules, as well as a lot of infrastructure that has to be in place for the laws and rules to work properly.
Two, these systems were developed over a long period of time, they weren’t put in place by a decree within any one, or even three terms of office. The groundwork started in the seventies, arguably even long before that. I’m sure the development process involved mistakes and bad ideas along the way, but over time the systems were refined, mistakes fixed and problems solved.

For example, the town where I used to live in built a massive waste processing facility, that turned out to be nearly useless. At the time it was quite the local scandal, and I’m sure it’s not the only one of its kind. What local officials get right in one place, they screw up through political wheeling and dealing in another, and vice versa. But the overall goal wasn’t abandoned, just because some people were being idiots.

Any government that thinks it can achieve results similar to those depicted in the video in a few years, or by a decree, or both, is on a fool’s errand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i1EoqMTRaY

@EmmyNoether @Piss_Ant Yeah, I’m leaning towars him being wrong on this as well.

For one, Finland implemented full housing first programme, and as far as I know the results are that it actually helps get addicts off drugs, rather than the other way around. And the same seems to be the case with trials elsewhere.

And of course quite apart from that, I think in a country where not having housing can be an effective death sentence at least part of the year, it’s just plain ethical to offer housing to anyone willing to stay under a roof.

You may be correct of his liberal fallacy. I don’t actually know what he bases his opinion on, but from what I’ve heard there’s actual proper data that it’s not the case.

@Piss_Ant Doesn’t seem that far removed from Boghossian’s argument against housing first-programmes, namely that they enable addiction.

Logic being, I think, that if you give an addict a roof over their head, they have less incentive to get dry and they’ll be more able to keep using.