Theresa May essentially did this while she was Home Secretary in the UK. It was the trigger of the whole “Windrush Scandal”, after it was revealed that the official paperwork of dozens hundreds of naturalised citizens was shredded without any record being made.

It caused people, most of whom were well into old-age to be deported, have their passports confiscated, and be denied access to healthcare services.

It’s Futurama, from the episode “Fry and the Slurm Factory”, which itself is a huge riff on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Futurama riffs and nods to old Sci-Fi all the time, and this was just a nice throwaway for those of us old enough to know the source material.

Here’s the exchange in full:

It was too good a line not to use here!

The whole Slurm factory episode has to be one of the finest pieces of comedy writing in history.

Soylent and Huel are both disgusting.

I don’t know. I’d say Soylent Green varies from person to person.

I’m sure it’s not the sole factor, but universities in many other parts of the world are partially subsidised by the government.

Double negatives are an integral part of UK English. Without them we might be forced to say something directly, which just wouldn’t be on.

The only thing I’ve heard general consensus on is how good-looking he is.

The most well-known British King, Henry VIII, was a large bulky man with a bushy red beard, dressed exactly as you imagine a King would be.

I imagine he’s something of a blueprint for the appearances of fictional kings.

I switched from “Boost for Reddit” to “Boost for Lemmy”, found as many equivalent subs as I could, and just went from there.

Because I’m using essentially the same interface, it’s a very similar experience.

You do realise that other countries have internet servers too?

Americans might lose access to social media, and the internet in general, but much of the world will still be online.

The way things are going, I fully expect to be turned into Soylent Green

From an outsider’s perspective, I think a lot of people think you guys sailed past the point of no return back in the 80s.

I think the only correct answer will be “there are lots of different reasons”.

My wife took my last name, even though it’s not a good one and I suggested that we pick a new one.

Here are a couple of her reasons:

1. She wanted us to have the same surname.

2. She was very close friends with my cousins growing up, so the name didn’t seem weird to her.

3. Tradition - she’d always assumed she would change her name to her husband’s name, so that seemed the most normal thing to do.

We could technically do it now, but you’d need a ton of quality control.

A basic workflow:

Use an image generator to generate start (and optionally end) frames of each scene.

Use a video generator like Runway to create the scene.

Use something to generate the speech, either a realistic text-to-speech engine or a record the dialog yourself and use AI voice changing software.

Use a lip synch AI to match the mouth flaps to the audio.

Generate music using something like Udio

Job done.

All these technologies exist and in some capacity are available to use. The only issue at the moment is consistent quality. This is coming on in leaps and bounds, however.

At our GP surgery, there are a couple of doctors who won’t consult on birth control matters for religious reasons.

There’s just a sign at the reception saying that if you need to discuss birth control, please let the receptionist know and they’ll be sure to assign a different doctor.

I love the optimism here, but unless there was a significant potential for profit, none of the people who have the resources to begin collecting ocean plastics could care less.

The sad truth is that the majority of the world’s resources are owned and controlled by a handful of psychopaths.

Only in the US and a select few other countries…

In other places, ‘Professor’ is a specific academic rank - there’ll only be a few professors in a university.

chefs kiss

Materials.

If you’d have seen the marble sculptures when they were new, you would have described them as anything but realistic. We now know that many, if not most, sculptures were painted in bright garish colours.

Why paint a delicately crafted sculpture with a dodgy paint job? Party taste, perhaps, but more definitely because that was what was available.

The paints that we have now are carefully designed, mixed and stored to deliver a wide range of colours of a consistent quality (and even modern companies like GW struggle with that!).

The further back you go, the fewer pigments there are and the less sophisticated the binders are. It’s no coincidence that the rapid explosion in science and trade of the Renaissance led to the rapid development of paints. Even in those days, an artist didn’t buy paint, they made it - access to new raw ingredients was all that was needed.

So, why the Renaissance? Because it’s the earliest point in time it could have been possible.

if they don’t have some already, 100% on the Brio train set - except not Brio. The generic wooden railway sets are just as good nowadays, and many many times cheaper.

You can buy a whole dinosaur themed wooden railway set on Amazon for £37. I’d want that, even as an adult!

FWIW, both of my kids played with their wooden railway for years - seriously good investment.