My dad and I started watching Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland today, on his request.
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@astronomerritt when someone told me its practically a caste system I understood it better
@cursedsql It’s not as violent and openly unpleasant and oppressive as most caste systems have been, but in the sense that you're born inescapably into it, yeah.
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@cursedsql It’s not as violent and openly unpleasant and oppressive as most caste systems have been, but in the sense that you're born inescapably into it, yeah.
@astronomerritt yeah in america these days we just think class = money + some ineffable refinement which we pretend has nothing to do with some sort of creepy american peerage but really does
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I also feel I need to explain, for Americans and other strange creatures, that class in Britain has absolutely nothing to do with how much money you have. You're born into a class and you're not getting out of it. It's your upbringing and your background and your language and your culture.
Your kids might be of a different class to you. Your grandkids certainly can be. But you're stuck with where you're born, and British society tends not to like it if you pretend otherwise.
Do not take this explanation for approval.
@astronomerritt I sit in this weird place where I was raised outside the UK and so I came to study here with this blind spot for class. Like, I would wonder why two sets of my friends, who seemed to have so much in common, just didn't seem to want to hang out together. 🙃
My accent codes me as middle-class, so you can imagine I was treated with some degree of bemusement at first by friends groups from working-class backgrounds. I was oblivious! I just thought it was clique dynamics of some kind.
Anyway yeah, from what I've come to learn I would definitely describe it as closer to a caste system than an economic one.
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@astronomerritt It may well be vulgar and even uneducated, but it also cuts through the crap and gets our attention, eh? That seems to me like using language effectively, in all its breadth.
As with so many things in recent years, I find myself thinking yet again of Doctor King's letter from a Birmingham jail.
"…the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…"
@daveybot @astronomerritt I much prefer someone sweary to those uptight types that repress their rage, hate and misandry and are pseudo-christian [or other religion] while demeaning and abusing women and children.
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@astronomerritt It may well be vulgar and even uneducated, but it also cuts through the crap and gets our attention, eh? That seems to me like using language effectively, in all its breadth.
As with so many things in recent years, I find myself thinking yet again of Doctor King's letter from a Birmingham jail.
"…the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…"
@daveybot Uneducated my hole, they didn’t take my ability to swear away from me when they gave me my PhD 😉
You’re spot on, though. And it seems as well that those who value their idea of civility over actual ideals like truth and justice don’t ACTUALLY value civility, as in the concept of treating all others with respect: they just don’t like to be made uncomfortable.
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Every British person does a subconscious class calculation when they meet someone, whether they admit to it or not. You want to know if someone is "like you" so you know how to speak to them and how to relate to them. But I mess up the calculations. I've got too many middle-class indicators now from being highly educated. (That's classism for you!) So swearing is, for me, often a way to reassure someone working-class that we're on the same level and can relate to each other as such.
It's annoying, though. I don't get angry at people much, but a close colleague once tried to joke that the Pulp song Common People was about me, having gotten the impression that my working-class indicators were the pretension, and not the middle-class ones. The idea that I might read as one of those fucking idiots who pretends to be working-class because they think it's "cool" drives me round the bend.
@astronomerritt
I grew up in West Central Scotland and went to a comprehensive school. On account of my good exam results I applied to St John's College, Cambridge and went down there for an interview. I had no idea which college to apply to, or on what basis such a decision would be made, so I just chose the one Douglas Adams had been to.
I turned up with a clean shirt, wearing one of my dad's ties. All the other candidates seemed to be wearing suits and carrying copies of The Economist.
I was not offered a place. -
@daveybot Uneducated my hole, they didn’t take my ability to swear away from me when they gave me my PhD 😉
You’re spot on, though. And it seems as well that those who value their idea of civility over actual ideals like truth and justice don’t ACTUALLY value civility, as in the concept of treating all others with respect: they just don’t like to be made uncomfortable.
@astronomerritt Gosh yeah. Never mistake manners for principles, eh?
I was also thinking about this in the last week as more and more songs came out regarding the recent horrors in Minneapolis.
(@WiteWulf had a great summary of them: https://cyberplace.social/@WiteWulf/115977684267122313)
I liked them all, but for pure effectiveness and impact of message, you really can't fault the Waterparks track.
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@astronomerritt I sit in this weird place where I was raised outside the UK and so I came to study here with this blind spot for class. Like, I would wonder why two sets of my friends, who seemed to have so much in common, just didn't seem to want to hang out together. 🙃
My accent codes me as middle-class, so you can imagine I was treated with some degree of bemusement at first by friends groups from working-class backgrounds. I was oblivious! I just thought it was clique dynamics of some kind.
Anyway yeah, from what I've come to learn I would definitely describe it as closer to a caste system than an economic one.
@Tattie God, I’ve nothing but sympathy for an outsider being forced to navigate this shit! It must have been so WEIRD from the outside. (Although I worry about calling it a caste system — I don’t think it’s that openly oppressive, I don’t want to act like my experiences were anything like being low-caste in India, for example.)
My parents worked their way into management roles, so they had middle-class friends, and it never struck me as weird that they’d drink in the social club with one set of mates, and then they’d drink in the nice pub with ANOTHER set of mates, and those sets almost never crossed or overlapped. Before I even had the words to describe it I knew that those friends were Different. It’s so fucked.
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@astronomerritt
I grew up in West Central Scotland and went to a comprehensive school. On account of my good exam results I applied to St John's College, Cambridge and went down there for an interview. I had no idea which college to apply to, or on what basis such a decision would be made, so I just chose the one Douglas Adams had been to.
I turned up with a clean shirt, wearing one of my dad's ties. All the other candidates seemed to be wearing suits and carrying copies of The Economist.
I was not offered a place.@chrisradonc You couldn’t have summed it up any better than that. And I sympathise. I had to work out literally everything about my post-secondary education myself because my parents, bless them, had no idea. Folk often don’t understand just how much of a leg-up you get from having the right parents and going to the right schools.
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@astronomerritt Gosh yeah. Never mistake manners for principles, eh?
I was also thinking about this in the last week as more and more songs came out regarding the recent horrors in Minneapolis.
(@WiteWulf had a great summary of them: https://cyberplace.social/@WiteWulf/115977684267122313)
I liked them all, but for pure effectiveness and impact of message, you really can't fault the Waterparks track.
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@astronomerritt
I grew up in West Central Scotland and went to a comprehensive school. On account of my good exam results I applied to St John's College, Cambridge and went down there for an interview. I had no idea which college to apply to, or on what basis such a decision would be made, so I just chose the one Douglas Adams had been to.
I turned up with a clean shirt, wearing one of my dad's ties. All the other candidates seemed to be wearing suits and carrying copies of The Economist.
I was not offered a place.@astronomerritt
I ended up studying medicine, a field dominated by the middle class. I found that few of them spoke like me.
As Ken Loach observed, "The problem is that the British middle class is obsessed with swear words."
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2012/ken-loach-the-british-middle-class-is-obsessed-with-swear-words/ -
@astronomerritt
I ended up studying medicine, a field dominated by the middle class. I found that few of them spoke like me.
As Ken Loach observed, "The problem is that the British middle class is obsessed with swear words."
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2012/ken-loach-the-british-middle-class-is-obsessed-with-swear-words/@chrisradonc Ken Loach is, as he is so often, absolutely correct.
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@astronomerritt
I ended up studying medicine, a field dominated by the middle class. I found that few of them spoke like me.
As Ken Loach observed, "The problem is that the British middle class is obsessed with swear words."
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2012/ken-loach-the-british-middle-class-is-obsessed-with-swear-words/@astronomerritt
Many years later, I still feel that medics look down on oiks like me.
https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h383 -
@astronomerritt
Many years later, I still feel that medics look down on oiks like me.
https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h383@chrisradonc There is a huge difference between swearing WITH someone and swearing AT someone, and it absolutely baffles me that articles like this will treat the two cases like they're remotely similar.
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@astronomerritt @tess Fun fact: Southern Irish professional classes swear like Glasgow dockers. We know the posh words to describe our desired intent, but there’s a time when you need to channel your internal Malcom Tucker.
https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/ttoi-malcolm-tucker-peter-capaldi-the-thick-of-it-gif-10919168
@SturmUndDranger @tess Just one of the many reasons you couldn't pry me out of Ireland with a crowbar. Even here in the North the class system is less of a ballache than it was in SE England where I grew up.
I used to be an academic, however, which meant I was interacting with a lot of middle-class English folks.
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@astronomerritt yeah in america these days we just think class = money + some ineffable refinement which we pretend has nothing to do with some sort of creepy american peerage but really does
@cursedsql Yeah, you guys absolutely have a class system but it's based on totally different principles, and I think this leads to misunderstandings -- we're using the same words to describe different things.
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@daveybot @astronomerritt I much prefer someone sweary to those uptight types that repress their rage, hate and misandry and are pseudo-christian [or other religion] while demeaning and abusing women and children.
@HarriettMB @daveybot amen to this, if you'll pardon the joke.
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@cursedsql It’s not as violent and openly unpleasant and oppressive as most caste systems have been, but in the sense that you're born inescapably into it, yeah.
@astronomerritt @cursedsql not internally anyway. The UK has been pretty shit to...pretty much everybody else, under that same system.
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@Tattie God, I’ve nothing but sympathy for an outsider being forced to navigate this shit! It must have been so WEIRD from the outside. (Although I worry about calling it a caste system — I don’t think it’s that openly oppressive, I don’t want to act like my experiences were anything like being low-caste in India, for example.)
My parents worked their way into management roles, so they had middle-class friends, and it never struck me as weird that they’d drink in the social club with one set of mates, and then they’d drink in the nice pub with ANOTHER set of mates, and those sets almost never crossed or overlapped. Before I even had the words to describe it I knew that those friends were Different. It’s so fucked.
@astronomerritt ach, it was weird but it was fine for me. Because of my accent I would tend to fall upwards, with my social clumsiness probably being seen as endearingly naive.
What prejudice I did suffer was based on my last name; the occasional "you speak English so well!" comments. But this only tended to happen when people saw my name before they met me. First impressions are powerful.
My wife used to sing Common People to me, which at first irritated me before I accepted the truth of it— I had privileges that she would never have, and if I didn't understand them I was quite capable of acting like a privileged wanker. I learnt that there were things she could say that I should not.
I observed how she had been the first person in her family to go to university, but despite their congratulations they had passive-aggressively undermined her until she dropped out. I heard how her mother's private reaction after meeting me was to ask if she was really "good enough" for me? I saw how my career accelerated while hers hit the class ceiling— always an assistant, never a manager.
And tho I don't want to minimise the horrors of the caste system in India, I have no patience for white Brits who tut and scold about that system, without recognising that in Britain, too, the circumstances of your birth denote the life trajectory and career you are "supposed" to have, and that British society as well will act to prevent class transgressions.
It is, as you say, extremely fucked.
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It's always a bit jarring to me when I see folk complain about bad language online, using phrases like "nobody has to use those words" and "it's always vulgar" and "it sounds uneducated".
Please understand: that is cultural bias.
@astronomerritt If you haven't read (or listened to) Melissa Mohr's Holy Sh*t you might enjoy it. Her whole last section goes into the intricacies of class swearing and who makes these sort of statements (and why).
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@afreytes that reads like on if those spoken parts in some Daft Punk and similar songs 8-D
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https://noeris.noblogs.org/2026/01/26/lavoriamo-per-la-guerra/
Volantinaggio contro la guerra
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Perché non abbiamo mai i governanti di cui avremmo bisogno ma sempre e solo quelli che ci meritiamo?
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@NicholasLaney giusta osservazione, ma torni presente che si parla di tempi molto lunghi qui, dove stravolgimenti o collassi della civilizzazione sono possibili. Ad esempio, gran parte della medicina moderna esiste e progredisce grazie all'industrializzazione, ed un collasso energetico avrà un impatto negativo altissimo sulla disponibilità dei servizi di salute pubblica che hanno abbattuto la mortalità pre-riproduttiva.
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@jwz Do you remember GLU? It had a perfectly good tesselator, and it turns out to be easy enough to separate from the open source GLU code into being standalone. I've done it once, and the libtess2 above is that too but cleaner than my old attempt. In general it's surprising how much good primitive game/graphics tech you can get by raiding either GLU or the old CPU renderers in Mesa.
Oh, btw, I guess the nanosvg I was using was this minor fork for better units support:
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@afreytes qué bueno.
