brexit

There’s a lot wrong with this viral list about the Lisbon Treaty – Full Fact
A large number of our readers have asked us to factcheck a list of claims about the Lisbon Treaty, or “what will actually happen if we stay in the EU”, which has gone viral on social media.

The list has appeared in numerous versions across different platforms since mid-December. The text at the beginning and end is often different, but the central list of claims is virtually identical across most of the versions we’ve seen.

Much of it is wrong. The list is a mixture of false claims, and claims that have some truth but could be misleading given the context.
(tags: brexit politics lisbon propaganda eu europe)

Stoicism’s Appeal to the Rich and Powerful – Ex Urbe

(tags: stoicism philosophy)

How to Buy a Car Without Interacting With a Human – The Toast
I wonder whether this works in the UK…
(tags: shopping cars money car)
Debugging Vim by example – David Winterbottom
“This post illustrates a range of debugging and profiling approaches for Vim by walking through real issues I’ve recently investigated, diagnosed and resolved. “
(tags: vim debugging)

Stumbling and Mumbling: The right’s triumph; the left’s complicity
“If I’d told you just four years ago that I was a Remainer, you wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. The fact that we now speak about little else reveals an under-appreciated fact about politics – that power consists not merely in getting your own way when conflict arises, but in shaping the agenda.

Back in 2015 less than 10% (pdf) of people thought relations with the EU were the important political issue – far fewer than cited the NHS, economy or crime. And yet a handful of cranks have succeeded in making Brexit (a word almost unheard in 2015) dominate politics to the exclusion of all else.”
(tags: politics brexit)

Quine’s Naturalism – 3:AM Magazine
“Sense data, Quine came to realize, are just as much theoretical posits as the electrons, bacteria, and chromosomes we supposedly construct from them. We do not see ‘patches of green, brown, and grey’ when we are walking through a forest; we see trees, logs, and squirrels. This is why it requires severe training to teach amateur painters to reproduce their everyday three-dimensional view of the world on a two-dimensional canvas.”
(tags: quine philosophy naturalism science epistemology)
Parliament is now at war with government – and it’s winning
“The content of Theresa May’s defeats over the last couple of days isn’t particularly meaningful, but the fact they happened at all suggests that parliament’s guerrilla war against the government has started. And it seems to be winning.”
(tags: constitution brexit politics parliament)

A very British dream | Richard Seymour on Patreon
“Problem number one for the Conservatives is that they no longer have any idea how to administer capitalism. No viable long-term growth strategy avails. They can’t address the financial sector without hurting their allies in the City. They can’t address the crisis of productivity and investment without more state intervention than they’re willing to accept. They can’t address the housing crisis or the precarious debt-driven economy without harming the interests of home owners. They can’t build new support in the rustbelts on an anti-immigrant basis, without sacrificing affluent swing voters and particularly ethnic minority voters in big cities and marginals.”
(tags: Politics conservatives may brexit)
We Don’t Do That Here
A neutral-sounding way to inform someone that they’ve crossed a line.
(tags: community morality)
A Bluer Shade of White Chapter 1, a frozen fanfic | FanFiction
Do you want to build a self-modifying snowman?
(tags: Singularity fiction story frozen olaf)

Why Stop Funding Hate deserves answers – Creative Review
“The Stop Funding Hate campaign is gaining traction and giving brands difficult decisions to make.” If you want something you can do, this is something you can do.
(tags: daily-mail newspapers hate daily-express politics)
Why the economy can’t explain Trump or Brexit – OpenLearn – Open University
Authoritarian social attitudes and the rate of change of minority population in an area are better predictors of Trump/Brexit voting than poverty.
(tags: trump brexit psychology authoritarianism politics)
Responding to Tim Keller’s “Making Sense of God” Talk
A shorter and better version than my own rebuttal of the book the talk was based on.
(tags: tim-keller Religion philosophy Atheism)
The President and the bomb | Restricted Data
The US military won’t stop a president from using nuclear weapons, the system is designed to make sure they can do so, not to prevent them.
(tags: politics military nuclear president)

Bit Twiddling Hacks
A collection of code snippets for doing useful things (sign extension, determine whether a number is a power of two, and so on).
(tags: bit-twiddling programming algorithms c hacks twiddling)
Anti-Brexit traitors outed on twitter
UKIP voters in “shit thick” shocker. Also features Louise Mensch.
(tags: twitter ukip funny brexit satire)
Horse! | Start here: See horse, Say Horse! – The Rules of Horse!
Horse!
(tags: funny game horse)