@pluralistic An absolute Toronto requirement; that combo, from Fresca.

“Hi, my name’s David, I’m one of the repair techs here, I’v been looking after your broken soldering iron today.”

“How’s he doing.”

“Take a seat.”

“Oh no.”

“Unfortunately, and there is no easy way to say this, we looked at your Iron, and, well, we found something.”

“Please, just give it to me straight.”

“Ok, well we found, and I’m so sorry, we found, firmware.”

“It has firmware?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s a soldering iron?”

“Yes.”

“So there is nothing you can do for it?”

“Unfortunately, when a tool has firmware, it’s always fatal. There is nothing we can do. I am very sorry.”

“But, it’s so young. I only got it like a month or so ago?”

“Sadly, we often see firmware on younger tools.”

“But it was fine yesterday, like totally fine?!”

“With any kind of firmware, it can just, you know, stop working.”

“What am I gonna tell the kids?!”

“Obviously you know your kids better than me, but as a general rule, I always tell people that kids appreciate honesty, and are more resilient than you might think. Be honest.”

“But how?”

“Just tell them, you were drawn in by the features, rather than just a functional thing, so that’s why you got it.”

“Ah man this is going to be rough.”

“Would you like to see him?”

“Not like this.”

#microfiction

Everything nowadays is annoying, evil or both, except for me. I remain delightful

@petersuber I was encouraged by how much it got wrong.

@rbreich

One white , one vote

re #Labour's demise and #Reform's victory

It's worth bearing in mind that #Starmer was already massively unpopular when first elected.

Labour won this mandate only on the Tory collapse. Under FPTP Labour receive a majority on about one third of the votes.

When you think of the rise of Reform, consider that Labour was already dying. Consider more people already didn't support Labour.

So what happened was bound to happen. Labour did all it could to boot left wingers from its party, and it succeeded. They destroyed their support from the people who volunteer and canvass. While Reform was on the rise, Labour was attacking the left and still is.

What has Labour done to actually win support? Win votes? What have they really done to counter the rise of Reform?

@mastodonmigration @lawyersgunsnmoney

https://song.link/s/4CjpZNM7kW22r384Wk9THj

@triptych hello, going back to sleep actually

@ChrisMayLA6

I always tend towards optimism - but with regard to the rise of RefomUK (and other extreme right parties across Europe) I see lots of hard evidence for optimism...
Not only, as you point out, did relatively few people vote extreme right, they did better, in general, the lower the turnout
Their voting percentage now seems to be falling - they may have passed their peak, whereas the Greens are still rising, both in terms of membership and voters
In any case, Reform's supporters are predominantly elderly (as are Tories) - Green supporters tend to be much younger - so Reform's decline is pretty inevitable
Reform will mess up in local government - as with Trump, and every previous fascist experiment, the more people see what extreme right government amounts to, the less they'll like it.

But more important than any of these considerations: what pessimists always forget is what most hard-pressed people's lives are like. I'm quite a political person, but there's a whole stretch of my life when I was working lots of hours, raising 4 children, and trying to do up our house, when both national and local politics shrank to nothing in my life. This is how most hard-pressed- people - the left's natural constituency - actually live. They know things are bad, and they want change, but they don't have the time or energy for much beyond hurried reading/viewing of headlines. If some mistakenly express the wish for change in a vote for Reform it evidences nothing other than the headlines' bias.

Un deuxième week-end de 3 jours avant le #KhrysPresso de @Khrys
On va finir par s'habituer !

https://framablog.org/2026/05/11/khryspresso-du-lundi-11-mai-2026/

(Photo de Cyclonebill - cc-by-sa)

@pallenberg Da haben die vier aber noch einen langen Marsch vor sich. Auf geht’s! Was besseres als den Tod findet man überall.

@JackTheCat

I don't think UK voters want to hear about Starmer's values and convictions.

I think they want policies that
inject adequate funding into public services and infrastructure
reduce housing costs
make both housing and jobs more secure
reduce energy consumption and costs
speed up the green transition
circulate money in local economies instead of extracting it to London or out into multinationals
etc
... basically, make life easier, now and for the children and grandchildren.

In a sign the Switch 2 has yet to create a self-sustaining demand cycle, Nintendo's shares plunged the most in three months after the company forecast hardware and software sales declines. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/05/11/companies/nintendo-shares-tumble/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #companies #nintendo #stocks #switch2 #videogames

@dgar the lack of oversight is certainly a bit of an oversight

This seems real real bad.

https://gizmodo.com/fcc-attempts-to-solve-robocall-problem-by-potentially-creating-even-bigger-privacy-problem-2000756762

The FCC is going to make it mandatory to show your ID and physical address to get a phone number.