My dad and I started watching Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland today, on his request.
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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).
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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.
I always found the singling out of certain words that either mean the same as or rhyme with other words to be extremely nonsensical. Never understood it, and people whining about "vulgar language" just makes me want to use it more.
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@astronomerritt @cursedsql not internally anyway. The UK has been pretty shit to...pretty much everybody else, under that same system.
@dave @cursedsql Oh, the Brits are fantastic at oppression. They did it at home first, and then they exported it.
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@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.
@Tattie God, your poor wife! No wonder you were furious for her: even her parents were acting against her with that peculiar crab-bucket sabotage working-class folk can be so very good at. I’m furious too. It’s such fucking bullshit.
My parents both broke that ceiling, so I at least grew up knowing it was possible, but I also saw what it cost them: a price in time and effort and graft that none of their middle-class friends had to pay to reach the same level. And there was far, far too much luck involved.
You’re right, too — white Brits should learn to recognise that they’re part of an oppressive system before they tut at other countries for having one. Especially when British fucking colonial rule is responsible for it.
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@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).
@SRLevine I’ll have to check it out! Thanks 💛
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@astronomerritt
@purplepadma is berk considered a big swear word?@BenCotterill @astronomerritt @purplepadma for me it's "in the class of insults used at school" (when I went to school), so definitely not.
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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 also: Fuck them. 😆
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it's also classist as fuck, imo, but I am told I need to stop turning everything into a class issue
(everything IS a class issue, you can fight me AND the chip on my shoulder)
@astronomerritt
It's definitely a middle class issue; both working & upper class are wholly uninhibited about swearing in daily life. -
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.
This was the wildest realization for me as I started to really dip into classic British lit. I had of course heard the phrase "your betters" before and thought it was a figure of speech; the idea that people actually thought (think!), in the face of a SUPERABUNDANCE of evidence to the contrary, that someone is literally better than someone else because their parents own land …
Even knowing for a fact that it's true, it can't be true.
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@Tattie God, your poor wife! No wonder you were furious for her: even her parents were acting against her with that peculiar crab-bucket sabotage working-class folk can be so very good at. I’m furious too. It’s such fucking bullshit.
My parents both broke that ceiling, so I at least grew up knowing it was possible, but I also saw what it cost them: a price in time and effort and graft that none of their middle-class friends had to pay to reach the same level. And there was far, far too much luck involved.
You’re right, too — white Brits should learn to recognise that they’re part of an oppressive system before they tut at other countries for having one. Especially when British fucking colonial rule is responsible for it.
@astronomerritt @Tattie "at least we're not as bad as..." is the British defense against anything.
Call a Brit racist, see how long it takes them to point at the US. You might want to wear ear plugs for the sonic boom their finger will make.
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@astronomerritt
It's definitely a middle class issue; both working & upper class are wholly uninhibited about swearing in daily life.@HighlandLawyer Yeah, somewhere in my posts I think I even say that the upper classes tend to be way more laid back. The position of extreme privilege probably helps: they so rarely see consequences, after all.
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This was the wildest realization for me as I started to really dip into classic British lit. I had of course heard the phrase "your betters" before and thought it was a figure of speech; the idea that people actually thought (think!), in the face of a SUPERABUNDANCE of evidence to the contrary, that someone is literally better than someone else because their parents own land …
Even knowing for a fact that it's true, it can't be true.
@stevegis_ssg Oh, you don’t have to go all the way up to landowners. The things middle-class people have said to my FACE about working-class folk, assuming that because I sound educated and intelligent I must be one of THEM and not one of THOSE… christ.
And my partner is from West Belfast so they get it even worse. They don’t have the Westie accent any more because nobody would fucking employ them in a professional field if they did, but what this means is that people will literally mock the people and the accent in front of them. Because nobody from West Belfast could have a professional career, right? Not like any of Those People could be listening.
Anyone who doesn’t think classism is alive and well in Britain is deluding themselves.
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@stevegis_ssg Oh, you don’t have to go all the way up to landowners. The things middle-class people have said to my FACE about working-class folk, assuming that because I sound educated and intelligent I must be one of THEM and not one of THOSE… christ.
And my partner is from West Belfast so they get it even worse. They don’t have the Westie accent any more because nobody would fucking employ them in a professional field if they did, but what this means is that people will literally mock the people and the accent in front of them. Because nobody from West Belfast could have a professional career, right? Not like any of Those People could be listening.
Anyone who doesn’t think classism is alive and well in Britain is deluding themselves.
@stevegis_ssg also Not All Middle Class People, obviously, just the ones who seem to entirely lack a sense of class consciousness or their own privilege
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undefined oblomov@sociale.network shared this topic
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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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.
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"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." -- Robert A. Heinlein
(It's #HootinTootinTuesday again! Post some jokes or funny memes under this hashtag today, and bring lots of smiles to #Mastodon.)
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Bonus #Joke
Q: What kind of dog never throws anything away?
A: A hoarder collie.(It's #HootinTootinTuesday again! Post some jokes or funny memes under this hashtag today, and bring lots of smiles to #Mastodon.)
#Humor #Humour #FunnyMeme #Puns #Dogstodon #DogsOfMastodon #DadJokes #Dogs #PuppyBowl #DogsOfTheFediverse #SpeedBumpComics #PuppyBowl2026
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I should note that two of my coworkers deserve co-credit for the concept. I shouldn't hog the glory
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@Sadsquatch
I know there's been talk of inviting our city councillors on a cycling tour of some of the best and worst infrastructure
@frstep
