In the heyday of premodern aristocratic dominance in Europe, median life expectancy at birth was ~10 years, so about half the children died before they turned 11 (though the ones that survived the fragile first decade tended to live a lot longer after). Between this grim statistic, stillbirth, other accidents that could kill them later on, women had a lot more children than today and spent a longer time pregnant or nursing.

The result of this, of course, is that women could spend less time working the fields and were more dependent on their family and partners to do the bread-winning labour (they were by no means idle; spinning thread, fetching water, spinning thread, making food, spinning thread, weaving, making clothes, spinning thread, cleaning the house and so forth all took a lot of time and work (particularly spinning thread, if it wasn’t clear enough), it just didn’t suffice to make a living.

Source: https://acoup.blog/2025/08/08/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-iiib-children-and-childrearing/

Before that background, I suspect that there is a method to this, whether consciously planned or a byproduct of chasing a past where men were even more dominant than they still are: Chaining women to childcare and domestic work to render them dependent on their male family members.

Maybe it’s a crackpot conspiracy theory. At this point, it’s getting hard to tell what’s intentional bigotry and what just suspiciously looks like it.

Part of what made Karo-Lyin’ good at her job was that she actually was in the briefings and meetings and shit, which meant that she did have real truth to tell. Of course, she lied anyway, but the fact that her calculated lies might point back to what she was concealing is what gave her weight with the journalists: A game of hide-and-seek with truth, but at least it gave them a chance to find it.

As the article points out, there’s no clear successor that would have that same truth to even play with in the first place. That would give whatever successor they install much less sway.

Must be able to suck mushroom dick and still be composed and presentable for a press conference twenty seconds later

Billy Talent’s “Viking Death March” is a song about religious hypocrisy, capitalistic exploitation and doing something about it.

I initially understood the chorus as singing “crosses to bend, axes to fall” and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The crosses in churches being torn down could fit with the axes, but you wouldn’t bend them so much as break them. The only usage for bent crosses I could think of were Swastikas, but that also didn’t quite seem to fit the rest of the song, nor the impression I had of the band.

Later, I figured out that it wasn’t “bend”, but “burn”, which still didn’t clear things up: Burning crosses also isn’t exactly a leftist symbol, and following up “You preach about love and teach about faith, but all your beliefs are still rooted in hate” with a call to burn crosses just doesn’t really track.

It’s not a call to action. It’s “Crosses still burn, axes still fall”. It’s calling attention to the fact that these hateful evils haven’t disappeared.

…but the libruhl gay commies are the special snowflakes

Am Rande: Dein Name verwirrt mich immer wieder. Ich nehme an das ist die Absicht. Wenn ja, funktioniert prima 😄

Many voters have been disillusioned. Why bother voting, if it’s just the same two brands of getiatric cunts.

What seems to be changing, as far as I can tell, is that they’re developing a sense for the power of primaries and more regional elections to shift the position of the less malignant brand.

The best indicator of success is the reaction of the Dem leadership: They weren’t as concerned about losing to the Reps as they were about this “insurrection” threatening their slow, balanced slide by actually tugging on that rope.

:love:

Benutze Voyager, mal schauen ob das klappt

Edit: Na geil, natürlich direkt danach erst die anderen Kommentare gesehen, dass es mit Voyager nicht klappt. Schade.

My bets friend gifted me a few different bottles of mead to try. We tried them together. One bottle was drained by the end, with him drinking about as much as I did.

And it was a great evening, spent with a friend I rarely have the chance to. The mead was good (and what’s left of it still is; pacing myself here), but the quality time was something I can’t order online.

The power is in the symbolism: Brute violence targets one person. Clever messaging can reach far more. The guillotine has a history of dealing with oligarchs. That makes it a symbol easily recognised by people with a passing familiarity with the French Revolution and easily explained for those without: a tool for dealing with despots.

Of course we need to be wary to not also turn it into a tool of despotism, as it was further down the line, but that’s beyond “passing familiarity”.

I’m just not going to die on this hill, no way.

Yeah, I think that’s the gist of the “who’s in the stall next to me” issue: it’s not by itself a hill worth dying on. Let them do their business, then they’ll clear out so I can do mine. I don’t give a damn where you shit or what organ you piss from, as long as you leave the place at least as clean as you found it.

It’s just that some people are dragging the rest of us into a stupid war over it, so now we gotta fight the bigots while learning to navigate a minefield of understandably sore spots, handle the “one signal, multiple audiences” problem and and deal with friendly fire by people meaning just as well as we do while we’re both struggling to see the battle lines.

I think it hits better if you put the demand first to set up the context and the “or else” second to deliver the punch. “Respect my trans homies, unless you wanna be a was/were” ends on the implication to wonder about. Putting it first might distract them from the second half of the message.

Not quite happy with my versuon either, though I’m not sure why. Might need more workshopping still.

As I understand it, it’s generally any form of compliance. Typically, it’s abusing technicalities, but what makes it “malicious” is that it subverts the intention behind the rule or order.

This law was designed to harass women. The transphobia is the vehicle used to deliver that intent, but for all its bigotry, it clearly isn’t the ultimate point. All the discourse is about “protecting (cis-)women”, about transfem athletes, and so on. Frankly, I’m not sure the type of politician to push this type of politics even remembers that transmascs exist. Even if they do, it’s not like they could do anything about it that wouldn’t risk collateral damage among cis-men.

Imagine how it would to if you tried to apply the “bathroom genital check” to the gender that invented etiquette about not standing too close to others when pissing. The geriatiric shrimpbearers in power would have a meltdown over the idea of someone manhandling their dick to make sure it’s real.

(Nothing wrong with a small dick, just with making your insecurity about it someone else’s problem.)

Now, unlike the transphobia, they can’t make the misogyny explicit in the law (or at least they aren’t sure they’d get away with it yet, so why risk it?). The law as written technically also applies to transmascs, even though they weren’t the target and it realistically would never be enforced against them.

Thus, the malicious compliance is that the transmascs carry out the letter of the law rather than its spirit, fully expecting the predictable result and provoking the authorities into tipping their hand.

Still seems derivative 🤔

It’s exploiting a vulnerability (unsecured API) without permission of the gym running the software, to the detriment of whoever arrives and finds their reservation cancelled and probably also of the gym who now (unjustly) has to deal with the (justly) upset customer.

The gym’s software should be secured better, but that doesn’t make it less of a hack.

War das Argument da nicht eher, dass das Heizen allgemein teuer wird, weshalb wir effizientere Heizungen brauchen?

Es hat offenbar weniger als sechs Stunden gedauert bis der Erzfeind aller linken Bewegungen den mutigen Ansatz zerschmettert hat:

Linke

Linux has made great strides to being approachable for new users. The agony of choice for so many things (distro, editor, nearly any tool family with more than one option) and the factionalism around the options is probably one of the few big obstacles left.

I don’t have a solution for the factionalism. I’d put forth a suggestion for a simple “standard” choice (Kate/gedit for GUI and nano for CLI; I personally use vim, but I think nano is more approachable) but I’m sure someone will disagree and we’re back to square one.

Because the vast majority of people would see a guillotine and go “oh that’s fucking cool”

They might also go “that’s concerning”. Most people aren’t great fans of violence, so the implication of a violent device might worry them.

But they still wouldn’t go “they’re coming for me”, unless they have a persecution complex and genuinely think someone’s out to get them.

Most of the latter group would be wrong.

Man, the guy just can’t help being a dick, can he? Like, if you don’t like the image and make a fork to replace it with one you prefer, it’s literally quicker to just say “replaces the mascot” instead of wasting extra words insulting it.