#find programmers UK

[charile0]

Top Tips for Hiring Freelance Programmers in the UK

In the digital age, finding skilled programmers for hire is critical for businesses looking to build robust websites, apps, or software solutions. Whether you’re a startup or an established company, hiring the right coder can make or break your project. Here’s a guide to help you hire programmers in the UK and ensure a successful partnership.

When you hire a programmer, it’s essential to define your project’s scope and requirements. Are you looking for a front-end developer to enhance user interfaces or a back-end web developer to manage server-side logic? Perhaps you need React developers for a dynamic, responsive website. Once you identify your needs, you can begin searching for web developers for hire through reliable platforms.

For businesses seeking top-notch talent, hiring a UK developer ensures a good balance of technical expertise and understanding of local market trends. You can choose to hire a coder online for flexibility or engage a professional from an agency offering front-end web development services. Platforms like hireacoder and others specialize in connecting you with skilled professionals.

If you’re working on a long-term project, it’s important to hire programmers for the project who are not just technically proficient but also align with your company’s values and goals. Freelance platforms or agencies can help you find coders for hire who meet your specific needs, whether it’s for a quick task or an extended project.

Finding the right website developer for hire doesn’t have to be challenging. With clear goals, a detailed project brief, and a reliable platform to connect with talent, you can build your dream team of developers. If you’re saying, "I need a programmer," start your search today and turn your vision into reality.

[true-bluesargent]

just saw the dear evan hansen uk tour and... dude it was so incredible. ryan kopel was INSANE he hit every note and his comedy acting was so so good and his performance of words fail... i can't even talk about it. and i loved the staging they had these windows that they could roll in and out so during waving through a window he would be separated from the rest of the cast on stage by an actual window........ you're joking!!!!! and when evan would be video calling jared they were both side by side facing the audience but the window dividers were lit up differently to show they were in different places and they had these little stands at the back where if a character was on the phone the person they were calling was behind them in a little lit-up box like they were inside a phone. COOL!!!! and the choreography for sincerely me was so good and so hysterical. the guys playing connor and jared were so so so good!!!! literally a life-changing show i think 15 year old me would never have stopped crying afterwards

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I wanted to thank you for your post about black women authors. It has pushed me to look critically at my reading habits, and I've added so many books/authors to my tbr pile that I'm really looking forward to.

I also watched a recent BBC documentary on modern African authors - it concentrates on African and UK-African authors - and it gave me loads more names to look at (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mf8x).

The whole process has me questioning all the media I consume - I'm starting to search out black and non-white classical composers now - and it's fantastic finding new art to appreciate.

Thank you so much for prompting this!

this is genuinely really lovely, that post has caused truly some of the most assbrained takes I've ever encountered but it's also so heartening to see all the thoughtful and curious exploration it's inspired as well!!

[mariacallous]

How a Gen Z gender divide is reshaping democracy

SEOUL/LONDON/BERLIN, May 29 (Reuters) - South Korea's young women are expected to lead a broad political backlash against the main conservative party at presidential elections on June 3, punishing it for months of chaos.

Multitudes of young men, though, are unlikely to join them.

In democracies worldwide, a political gender divide is intensifying among Gen Z voters, with young men voting for right-wing parties and young women leaning left, a break from pre-pandemic years when both tended to vote for progressives.

Recent elections spanning North America, Europe and Asia show this trend is either consolidating or accelerating, with angry, frustrated men in their 20s breaking to the right.

First-time South Korean voter Lee Jeong-min is one of them.

He says he will vote for the right-wing Reform Party's candidate, Lee Jun-seok, on June 3. Lee, the candidate, vows to shut down the ministry of gender equality, speaking to an issue that resonates with men like Lee, the voter, who particularly resents that only men have to do military service.

"As a young man, I find this to be one of the most unfair realities of living in Korea. At the prime of their youth — at 21 or 22 years old — young men, unlike their female peers, are unable to fully engage in various activities in society because they have to serve 18 months in the military."

In South Korea, almost 30% of men aged 18-29 plan to back the Reform Party compared with just 3% of young women, according to a Gallup Korea poll this month.

Overall, more than half of the men back right-wing parties while almost half the women want the left-wing Democratic Party candidate to win. The divergence shrinks for older age groups.

Political economist Soohyun Lee, of King's College London, said many young South Korean men felt unable to meet society's expectations: find a good job, get married, buy a home and start a family.

And they blame feminism, many believing that women are preferred for jobs. With negligible immigration in South Korea, Lee said, "women become the convenient scapegoat".

ANGRY YOUNG MEN

In South Korea and other democracies, Gen Z men are seeing an erosion of their relative advantage, especially since the pandemic -- to the point where in a few countries the gender pay gap among 20-somethings favours young women.

EU data shows one of them is France, where men aged 18-34 voted in larger numbers for Marine le Pen's far-right party than women in last year's legislative elections.

In the UK, where more young men than women vote conservative, males aged 16-24 are more likely to be neither employed, nor in education than female counterparts, official data shows.

In the West, young men blame immigration as well as diversity programmes for competition for jobs.

In Germany's general election in February, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a record 20.8% of the vote, tugged along by an undercurrent of support from young men -- though the leader of the party is a woman.

Men aged 18-24 voted 27% for the AfD while young women ran to the other end of the political spectrum, voting 35% for the far-left Linke party, according to official voting data.

"A lot of young men are falling for right-wing propaganda because they're upset, they have the feeling they're losing power," said Molly Lynch, 18, a Berliner who voted for Linke, drawn by its stand on climate change and economic inequality.

"But it's actually losing power over women that wasn't actually equal in the first place."

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[oifaaa]

I have a fun new game I'm playing where anytime I find out something good a vaccine has done I share that news with my deeply anti vax mother I know it won't change her mind but it makes me happy anyway today I learned that the HPV vaccination programme the UK started in 2008 has managed to cut down the amount of cervical cancer cases by 90% in England

[everygame]

Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos (C64)

Developed/Published by: Dalali Software / Creative Sparks (Thorn EMI Computer Software) Released: 1984 Completed: 05/12/2024 Completion: Got a high score of 8750. I’ll take it!

Writing about old video games for an audience of very few could seem like a thankless task–especially when they’re as awful as Christmas Crackers. But there’s a reason I do it. One, I just love playing games, even if they’re so crap I give up on them in minutes. Two, I just love learning. I love discovery, I love finding out things that are new to me about video games and their history. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, I find out some things that no one has really paid attention to before.

I never thought playing a completely random Christmas cash-in on C64 would bring me anything like that.

Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos is a game for C64, Spectrum and Atari 8-Bit released by Dalali Software under Thorn EMI’s “Creative Sparks” imprint. At the time it sank without trace due to, apparently, a lack of marketing. After playing it–and I will get into that–I did my usual investigation into the developer, and was quite prepared to dismiss Dalali as one of the many fly-by-night British game developers of the 1980s–they appeared to be only a going concern between 1984 and 1989 and didn’t have any particularly notable games to their name. They were responsible for ports of Rescue On Fractalus and Lilttle Computer People to Amstrad CPC, but largely seem to have had the bad luck of being most related to 1986’s Biggles game. The weirdest thing about that is that not only did I really like the movie on which it was based (which I’m sure no one else remembers but me) when I was a kid, watching it on telly several times, I’ve actually played the game! It was on Amstrad Action #68’s covertape (along with How To Be A Complete Bastard!) and, as vague as my memories of it are now, I’m sure I played it loads of times. Less than How To Be A Complete Bastard, admittedly.

This led me to dig a little further, and sometimes things just fall into place, because I found an astonishingly in-depth article from Sham Mountebank’s When Were They Now? blog (a new one to me) all about Dalali. I think Mountebank slightly buries the lede however, because digging into the linked articles it seems absolutely remarkable that Dalali is not only in the ranks of the earliest companies to have been founded (or co-founded) by a woman, but very likely the first game company founded by a Palestinian: Hanan Samara.

Hanan Samara, pictured in Computer & Video Games March 1985.

Game companies had been co-founded by women before–most famously Sierra, by Roberta Williams and her husband Ken in 1979–but I think Samara’s story might be unique.  According to an interview with ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast she believes she might have been the first female assembly programmer in the UK, starting out by converting software to work for the Arabic market. Moving to work for Thorn EMI, she’d see a Humpty Dumpty puzzle game–programmed by her future husband(!) Chris James–and be “hooked.”

After coding Jumbo Jet Pilot for Atari 8-Bit for Thorn EMI, it seems that she made the leap to founding Dalali–named for her mother’s maiden name (as her mother said go for it, while her dad said to get a job at IBM...) with another ex-employee, Adrian Wadley.

Something I really appreciate about Samara’s story is that she immediately brought herself to game design, with Dalali’s first game “Jinn Genie”. While this kind of Arabic-theming undoubtedly seems stereotypical today, in an interview with Popular Computing Weekly it is clear that this is an early example of someone trying to represent their culture via the art of video games:

“Jinn Genie is a game that incorporates many of the basic myths and children’s stories of my culture–I am an Arab, a Palestinian, and all the ideas of genies and so on are familiar to me.”

Jinn Genie, on C64.

The most disappointing thing, to me, is that Samara is, at this point, unheralded outside of a blog post, one short podcast, and about… three short articles featuring three pictures that can be found on archive.org! She’s one of the UK’s earliest female programmers, game designers and founders, perhaps the first Palestinian game developer, and she has managed to run Dalali since 1984 because it’s still going–they just stopped making games.

Samara’s story isn’t mine to tell, so I hope that institutions like GDC, The Video Game History Foundation or The Strong can find out more and champion her. Figures such as Muriel Tramis have gone from overlooked to winning the Legion of Honour, and if I can help get the word out about Hanan Samara, just a little bit, I’ll feel I’ve done my part.

But I know what you’re asking now.

“But how good is Special Delivery: Santa’s Christmas Chaos???”

So let's return to regular programming. First, I’m going to note that I believe I have played the wrong version of this. When it came to games, Samara was an Atari 8-bit coder, and it is absolutely transparent that Special Delivery is based entirely on Jinn Genie–both feature a flying section, a climbing section, and a section with floors and ladders. It does feel like I should have played the Atari 8-bit version to experience the most representative version, as I did with playing the C64 version of Pirates, let’s say.

(It’s worth mentioning here also that the ANTIC podcast–recorded seven years ago now–even notes that the version of Jinn Genie that Samara coded, for the Atari 8-bit, seems to be lost, although Samara does say that she has a copy of it somewhere. Aforementioned institutions could probably help with that too. What that largely means, though, is that the Atari 8-bit version of Special Delivery is the closest you can get to playing the original Jinn Genie.)

To be fair, the C64 version seems pretty close to the original (the ZX Spectrum port is… not).

As I’ve said previously, my expectations for a Chrimbo cash-in have been low, and no matter how much this is sort of a reskin of a previous game, that it’s got an idea and an actual design exceeds anything I’ve expected. At first glance you might go “well, isn’t this just Santa Claus again?” (or even Santa’s Sleigh Ride.) But it’s honestly much more–even if it is still a bit weird.

In Special Delivery, you’re first flying across the screen in Santa’s (somewhat confusingly drawn) sleigh, collecting presents that… angels are dropping. Which implies that this is in fact the historical Saint Nicolas, or maybe I’m just overthinking it. You’re trying to collect a target number of presents, but you lose them if you crash into clouds (odd) or accidentally collect a demonic present dropped by a devil (who appear rarely, but look very much like angels, annoyingly.) Losing presents won’t kill you, but Santa has a set amount of hours in the night, and you lose an hour if you get struck by the lightning that occasionally appears from the strangely firm clouds.

If you collect enough presents, you get to land on a big house to put presents under the tree. First this requires you climb down the chimney, which in this situation is: huge, full of ladders, and lit so flames keep climbing the ladders that you have to dodge. Once you’ve done that, you’re actually in the house, where you have to Solid Snake your way to the tree, drop off the present, grab the front door key, and then leave through the front door, while the residents run wildly from one room to the next, seemingly out of their nut with either excitement for Christmas or hatred for Santa. Get hit by a flame or grabbed by a resident and you’ll lose an hour.

Interestingly, if you don’t collect enough presents, you don’t get to go into any big houses, but you do get to drop presents down the chimney of some wee houses. You only really pick up big points for going into big houses, which raises the concerning idea that Santa only gives a fuck about you if you’re rich enough to live in a big house.

But to be fair, the people in big houses seem absolutely determined to not get pressies, keeping their fires roaring and attacking Santa on sight, so perhaps he just likes the challenge. “I hope Santa doesn’t show up” they’re saying, “we’ve got all the stuff we need in this big house. We don’t need wooden toys or whatever the historic Saint Nick would be handing out, he should give those to the poor people in the wee houses.”

More fool them, I checked Wikipedia and he was dropping off bags of gold coins through people’s windows. (Admittedly to stop them being sold into prostitution.)

Anyway. Even before I knew the exciting context for Special Delivery, I was struck by how… weirdly ok it was! Maybe it’s just how bad the other Santa-em-ups have been (well, I guess I didn’t hate Merry Xmas Santa) but the different sections largely make sense together, undoubtedly because it’s based on Jinn Genie. The main problem really is that it just doesn’t control very well. Flying the sleigh is stiff, and when you’re actually controlling Santa himself, he reacts very slowly to your input, meaning you have to time presses based on the lag, and I probably lost most of my lives in the chimneys as a result–it might be better on the Atari 8-Bit, so more fool me.

Special Delivery is not really the kind of thing that’s going to hold your attention for very long, but it does actually manage to be playable and feels properly festive. I’ll celebrate that.

Will I ever play it again? I was surprised to see a non-zero number of people say online that playing this is a bit of a Christmas tradition. Well, I don’t think I will be taking it up, but I do fancy playing Jinn Genie at some point now--maybe once that Atari 8-bit version is found!

Final Thought: In my research I was surprised to discover not only had I played a Dalai Software game before, I’d also played a Creative Sparks game, similarly loads of times: Danger Mouse In Double Trouble. Strangely, it has the same multi-game design as this (and I guess, a lot of the computer games of the era) but suffered a lot more for them not having any meaningful connection and mostly being rubbish. Even as a child I remember enjoying just the jungle level and suffering through the rest to get through that. The things you’ll do when you’ve got nothing else as a child.

Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24 is OUT NOW! You can pick it up in paperback, kindle, or epub/pdf. You can also support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[osmanthusoolong]

“Is porn addiction real? Less so than claimed, argues Lisa Hagen in a bombshell report for NPR. In this article, the journalist explores the ‘masturbation abstinence’ and anti-porn addiction movement in the US, finding a landscape filled with pseudoscience, reactionary rhetoric, and shame. “In one study,” Hagen notes, “among people who self-identify as ‘pornography addicts’, the average frequency of porn use was less than ten times a year”.”

…

“Meanwhile, sex acts outside the norm are often configured as things that only exist to hurt and degrade women or pollute their relationships, rather than as things women could possibly be interested in. Several of the women I’ve talked to have spoken about being into kink, and about how alienated they feel by discourse that kink is just a cover for violence against women, rather than something women themselves can desire and instigate.”

…

“The subtextual ‘threat’ behind ‘wrong’ porn gets very queer, very quickly. An interviewee for NPR describes a common set of anxieties on the forums he frequented: ‘‘The common themes were ‘porn is turning me gay’ or ‘porn is making me cross-dress’ or ‘porn is making me want to be dominated’ or ‘porn is making me like transgenders [sic]’.” It’s pretty clear that men are feeling drawn to the taboo thrills of getting topped, gender-play and gay exploration, whether as fantasy or as real possibility; men are also, I noticed, sometimes seeing straight porn and identifying with the woman. This opens up possibilities and anxieties that ‘porn addiction’ forums seek to close off. If you’re thinking about this stuff at all, they say, you have an addiction that is driving you to seek out ‘extreme’ material, and you need help. Reading this as a queer guy felt like hearing the Kill Bill sirens going off: it’s so clear that any erotic charge towards sex workers of any kind, gay men, trans women, or stigmatised forms of sex are seen as polluting ‘proper’ straight life.

If you read through anti-porn forums and programmes as someone who knows what conversion therapy looks like, you will find its tells in abundance. Heavy emphasis on shaming, while also promising that the programme will provide a way out of that shame; advice that new desires might not go away, but can be ignored and managed; unspoken assumptions that monogamous, cisgender, heterosexual, vanilla sex is the sexual ideal; heavy use of pseudoscience; intimations that the reader is being purposely corrupted by the porn industry or a wider, conspiratorial ‘agenda’. UK Rehab’s page on porn addiction advises that “pornography addiction can lead to changes in sexual tastes, desires and practices […] which can cause huge problems for addicts in relationships. The addict may begin to engage in different forms of sexual experience and expression, which may include risky sexual behaviour […] Even in less extreme cases, as mentioned above repeated exposure to hard-core pornography can lead to changed expectations of partners, which can make attaining a “normal” sex life increasingly difficult”. What is ‘normal’ here? What is ‘risky’? What are the ‘tastes’ in question?”

…

“Women, in particular, are taught that men’s excessive sexual desires are the root of cheating and disloyalty and sexual violence (rather than the misogyny that makes men disregard women’s boundaries, for instance), and that they therefore need to surveil and police their partners’ porn use. This is furthered by the assumption that any desire to use porn at all is a marker of unmanageable sexual vice and voraciousness, which you’ll particularly find in evangelical/religious circles.”

The fact that people will argue in court that this problem that, again, doesn’t exist, is responsible for CSA and other sexual violence and not the structure of society and families encouraging and enabling such…

…

“Most people who think they’re addicted to porn aren’t. What they’re addicted to is policing their own genders and sexualities, hoping that if they just do so a little more successfully, all their personal and relational problems will fall away.”

This seems relevant to the constant discussion about the subject here, especially given the politics of the people who think porn addiction/porn brain/etc is real

[1nk20ul]

I would love to know the birthdays of the other tma characters (particularly Gerry, Micheal Shelley, and Tim)

TMA Birthdays Revealed (Continued)

You've got it.

Let's go in the order that you requested, starting with Gerry Keay.

(This is a continuation of my previous post, where I determine Jon and Martin's birthdays to the best of my ability. Make sure to check it out if you haven't yet!)

Spoiler alert: Gerard is one of the few characters for whom we have an objectively correct/confirmed answer. Just like last time, I'll list all of the results in the tags as a TLDR. Let's begin!

As I said, Gerry's birthday is shockingly the easiest to find out of everyone in the entire main series. However, none of our clues are actually found in Archives. Rather, it's the Magnus Protocol ARG that flat-out gives us this answer. Compared to last post, I feel like I'm being spoiled.

For those unaware, chdb.xlsx (Child_Database.Excel) is a 250-row list of participants in the Magnus Institute's Gifted Child programme. Of these, last names like Dyer, Nolan, Barker, Baldwin, etc. appear, although it's possible some are simply a coincidence.

One we know is not. Behold:

(Yes, his last name is spelled Kaey in this dataset. It's an easy typo to miss in a 250-row document. Don't worry about it.)

According to Chdb, Gerry's birthday is 4th February, 1988. For those paying attention to my original Birthday post, this is exactly two days after my calculation for Jon's birthday, down to the year. This pleases me.

I'll even throw in a bonus for you. Based on his data, he is quite empathetic - yet not very susceptible to peer pressure! You're welcome, Gerrianators.

Let's move to Michael Shelley.

Unfortunately, we're not as lucky this time. Michael's age is just as twisted up as what became of him. Here's what we know:

Michael worked with Eric Delano prior to Eric's resignation in 1990, but was also hired to replace Fiona Law during or after 2003.

Michael's death was sometime between 2009-2011, however was supposedly already distorted in 2006.

Jonny joked on Twitter that Michael "is 92 at all points in the timeline."

There is virtually nothing to go off of here... The month and day are an absolute mystery to us as well. So congrats! His birthday is 92.

Thankfully, Tim is a little bit easier on us.

We need to use Danny Stoker's death as a starting point here. We know that Danny died in 2013 at no younger than 21 years old. Beforehand, Tim spent the previous 5 years at Victory House Publishing. Before that, in 2007, he completed his First in Anthropology at Trinity College. As a Bachelors degree typically takes three years to complete, we can assume Tim was most likely 18 in 2004. The birth year is easy to calculate from there.

For month, all we can do is process of elimination. Let's start with when his birth month isn't. Since the tapes contain no mention of a birthday party like Jon and Martin had prior to MAG 40 (when shit hits the fan), we know that it is less likely to be between September to mid-March, although this is mainly a mix of speculation and educated guessing. We can at least confirm the September cutoff, though, by cross-referencing age requirements for schooling in the UK. Unfortunately, this is where our luck ends. All in all, I think we still did quite well here.

Our final result is April-August 1986. He died at 31 years old. Bonus: He is anywhere from 1-6 years older than his brother. This is not a surprise to absolutely anyone.

A recap of our final results:

Gerard Keay - 4th February, 1988

Michael Shelley - Permanently 92 years old

Timothy Stoker - April-August, 1986

Thanks again, everyone. I have a wonderful time making these, it's great fun! I have a few more posts in mind that I'd like to make, so feel free to leave an Ask. See you next time!

[eretzyisrael]

Britain Is Sending Millions to Hamas

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, May 2025. (@Keir_Starmer/X)

It’s Sunday, May 25, and the British government is knowingly sending millions of pounds to Hamas. That’s according to an astonishing investigation aired last night on Channel 12, in partnership with NGO Monitor.

There’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll try highlight the main findings.

Most damning is a British Consulate-General in Jerusalem document obtained by NGO Monitor. Written in November 2022, the document discusses, amongst other things, British financial assistance for the Gazan population via UNICEF from 2022 until 2026. It says the following:

“The risks to the success of the programme are moderate, with major risks of actual or perceived diversion of humanitarian aid.”

It highlighted the risk of “direct or indirect diversion of aid to the de facto authorities in Gaza and/or other terrorist groups. Cash cannot be tracked once withdrawn from the ATM. There are reputational and fiduciary risks around actual or perceived links of UK aid with supporting terrorist groups.” 

And here’s the worst part: “The cash assistance component will be implemented in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development MoSD. The MoSD in Gaza is affiliated with the de facto authorities and thus UK Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group.”

In other words, as NGO Monitor’s Anne Herzberg put it, “a Hamas-controlled entity was an integral partner in determining how cash assistance provided by the UK government to UNICEF would be distributed in Gaza.”

Ok, but maybe London changed its policy after October 7? Well, in March 2024, UNICEF wrote that it “maintained and strengthened the partnership with the MoSD,” adding in November that “this humanitarian cash transfer program in the Gaza Strip is supported by the European Union, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).”

And how much money are we talking about? Citing the UN Financial Tracking System, NGO Monitor wrote that “in 2024, the UK provided UNICEF with approximately $23.1 million for West Bank and Gaza operations.”

And yet, at the same time that Britain is knowingly sending millions of pounds to Hamas, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is busy condemning Israel for the war in Gaza, suspending free trade talks with Jerusalem, and sanctioning Israeli citizens.

Instead of lecturing Israel, Mr. Starmer would do well to reflect on his own government’s contribution to the war—and to the terrorists who started it.

More: Here

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

HOW TO HELP:

A list of organisations working to aid communities around the world suffering humanitarian emergencies.

MSF provide urgent medical and surgical care in conflict and crisis zones, providing treatment to anyone who needs it, regardless of political affiliation or what side of a conflict they’re on.

The World Food Programme provides urgent food packages to communities that are most at risk of food insecurity, in places like Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, the Congo, Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and many more.

https://www.rescue.org/uk?_gl=1*1pjpb2g*_ga*MTA0MjAyNTQ0MC4xNzA3OTE3NTA1*_ga_2VX3X7JYPY*MTcwNzkxNzUwNS4xLjEuMTcwNzkxODMwMS4wLjAuMA..*_ga_DDZCWB8N2Y*MTcwNzkxNzUwNS4xLjEuMTcwNzkxODMwMS40Ny4wLjA.

The International Rescue Committee provides vital aid to people living in conflict zones, such as Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan.

Action Aid supports women and girls around the world who are most at risk of deprivation and poverty, sexual violence and FGM. They also provide menstrual products in areas where it is almost impossible to find the most basic levels of hygiene and sanitation, such as conflict zones.

Beyond Conflict is a mental health charity working with survivors of war, with a focus on children, and are currently funding projects to help both Israelis affected by the Hamas pogrom in October and Palestinians affected by the ongoing war.

Refugees International works with refugees and displaced people around the world.

[creature-wizard]

How Project Monarch fails the "Six Ways To Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory" sniff test

The 2017 article Six Ways To Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory lists six characteristics of conspiracy thinking that break down with a small amount of critical thinking. (I recommend reading the whole thing for yourself!)

If we compare the claims made about Project Monarch to the six items on this list, we can see that they meet five of the six items all six items, including:

No Leaks: The type of programming methods associated with Project Monarch have allegedly been practiced for at least seventy years in numerous countries (including but not limited to the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and France) in all levels of society, yet no documents containing evidence proving its existence (such as documents containing alter scripts, programming and ritual protocols, programming session notes, alter access codes, and various memos) has ever been leaked.

Evidence Gap: Investigations of cases where we might expect to find evidence of Monarch-style programming have never found any such thing. If this was happening in the way people claim, we should expect at least some criminal investigations (including but not limited to investigations of child abuse, drug possession, and murder) to also uncover the aforementioned document types. We should also expect the more obvious programming tools and props (such as human-sized cages, ETC devices, ritual sites done up to look like UFOs or whatever, programming tapes and audio files, etc) to turn up in conjunction with such documents. And of course, we should be finding a lot more animal and human remains, with all of the ritual sacrifices they're supposedly performing.

Inconsistent Capabilities: Believers claim that programming cults are so hypercompetent that can hide or destroy all physical evidence of their existence, and apparently never place any digital literature on unsecure devices or file servers. Yet they are somehow also so inept that they can't stop all of these alleged victims from telling everything to their therapists, writing and publishing books, and from posting online. (They've apparently never heard of stalkerware, or at least not allowing someone to use the Internet without heavy supervision.)

Prediction Horizon: The alleged triggers that supposedly force different alters to front or activate specific programming are often extremely commonplace stimuli, including (but not limited to) simple colors, patterns, and images (for example, the image of a specific flower), common phrases (for example, "I called to see how you're feeling") and common gestures (for example, clasped hands).

It would be impossible for programmers to prevent their victims from coming across many of these triggers by pure happenstance, because they simply can't predict or control other people's behavior on a large enough scale. They can't know or control, for example, when the pop song they've used as a trigger will play on the radio in a store, or when the neighbor will suddenly decide to plant a bed of daisies, or when a bank teller will wear a blue silk shirt. And considering some of the roles alters are allegedly programmed for, things would get really awkward really fast.

Method-Goal Mismatch: Monarch-type programming is still allegedly practiced today because numerous cults and abusive groups want perfectly compliant, obedient people. But the methods they are claimed to use are both extraordinarily risky and effort-intensive, and ultimately do not appear to be more rewarding than conventional methods of indoctrination, manipulation, and generally limiting a person's capacity to exercise autonomy (such as deprivation of education, funds, and legal papers).

Unfalsifiable: Failure to locate hard evidence of Project Monarch or Monarch-like practices are attributed to the alleged hypercompetence of the cultists, government agents, etc. When the question of why neighbors, teachers, doctors, etc. didn't notice anything strange comes up, believers claim they're all cultists or agents. Records that contradict claims of ritual abuse are claimed to be falsified. Obviously impossible events described by patients are simply chalked up to confusion from drugged states. Numerous books in favor of this conspiracy theory assures us that denying abuse or admitting to your therapist that you fabricated your claims is further evidence of programming.

In conclusion, while we know that Project MK-Ultra existed, claims of Project Monarch's existence and the widespread, even systemic practice of the techniques it alleged developed are easily demonstrated as nothing more than conspiracy theories.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Many long COVID patients adjust to slim recovery odds as world moves on - Published Nov 14, 2024

By Jennifer Rigby and Julie Steenhuysen

Summary Long COVID symptoms can persist for years, with slim chance of full recovery Funding and attention for long COVID research are dwindling in many wealthy countries Long COVID symptoms can include extreme fatigue, brain fog, breathlessness and pain

LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - There are certain phrases that Wachuka Gichohi finds difficult to hear after enduring four years of living with long COVID, marked by debilitating fatigue, pain, panic attacks and other symptoms so severe she feared she would die overnight.

Among them are normally innocuous statements such as, "Feel better soon" or "Wishing you a quick recovery," the Kenyan businesswoman said, shaking her head.

Gichohi, 41, knows such phrases are well-intentioned. "I think you have to accept, for me, it’s not going to happen."

Recent scientific studies shed new light on the experience of millions of patients like Gichohi. They suggest the longer someone is sick, the lower their chances of making a full recovery.

The best window for recovery is in the first six months after getting COVID-19, with better odds for people whose initial illness was less severe, as well as those who are vaccinated, researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States found, opens new tab. People whose symptoms last between six months and two years are less likely to fully recover.

For patients who have been struggling for more than two years, the chance of a full recovery "is going to be very slim," said Manoj Sivan, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Leeds and one of the authors of the findings published in The Lancet.

Sivan said this should be termed "persistent long COVID" and understood like the chronic conditions myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia, which can be features of long COVID or risk factors for it.

WANING ATTENTION Long COVID, defined as symptoms persisting for three months or more after the initial infection, involves a constellation of symptoms from extreme fatigue to brain fog, breathlessness and joint pain.

It can range from mild to utterly disabling, and there are no proven diagnostic tests or treatments, although scientists have made progress on theories about who is at risk and what might cause it. One British study, opens new tab suggested almost a third of those reporting symptoms at 12 weeks recovered after 12 months. Others, particularly among patients who had been hospitalized, show far lower rates of recovery.

In a study, opens new tab run by the UK's Office for National Statistics, two million people self-reported long COVID symptoms this past March. Roughly 700,000, or 30.6%, said they first experienced symptoms at least three years previously.

Globally, accepted estimates have suggested between 65 million, opens new tab and 200 million, opens new tab people have long COVID. That could mean between 19.5 million and 60 million people face years of impairment based on the initial estimates, Sivan said.

The United States and some countries like Germany continue to fund long COVID research.

But more than two dozen experts, patient advocates and pharmaceutical executives told Reuters that money and attention for the condition is dwindling in other wealthy countries that traditionally fund large-scale studies. In low- and middle-income countries, it was never there.

"The attention has shifted," said Amitava Banerjee, a professor at University College London who co-leads a large trial of repurposed drugs and rehabilitation programmes.

He says long COVID should be viewed as a chronic condition that can be treated to improve patients' lives rather than cured, like heart disease or arthritis.

'PROFOUNDLY DISABLING' Leticia Soares, 39, from northeast Brazil, was infected in 2020 and has battled intense fatigue and chronic pain ever since. On a good day, she spends five hours out of bed.

When she can work, Soares is a co-lead and researcher at Patient-Led Research Collaborative, an advocacy group involved in a review, opens new tab of long COVID evidence published recently in Nature.

Soares said she believes recovery seldom happens beyond 12 months. Some patients may find their symptoms abate, only to recur, a kind of remission that can be mistaken for recovery, she said.

"It's so profoundly disabling and isolating. You spend every time wondering, 'Am I going to get worse after this?'" she said of her own experience.

Soares takes antihistamines and other commonly available treatments to cope with daily life. Four long COVID specialist doctors in different countries said they prescribe such medicines, which are known to be safe. Some evidence suggests they help.

Others have less success with mainstream medicine.

Gichohi's illness was dismissed by her doctor, and she turned to a functional medicine practitioner, who focused on more holistic treatments.

She moved out of her hectic home city of Nairobi to a small town near Mount Kenya, policing her activity levels to prevent fatigue and receiving acupuncture and trauma therapy.

She has tried the addiction treatment naltrexone, which has some evidence of benefit for long COVID symptoms, and the controversial anti-parasitic infection drug ivermectin, which does not but she says helped her.

She said shifting from "chasing recovery" to living in her new reality was important.

A piecemeal treatment approach is to be expected while research progresses, and perhaps longer-term, said Anita Jain, a long COVID specialist at the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, long-haulers face a new challenge with each spike in COVID cases. A handful of studies have suggested re-infection can exacerbate existing long COVID.

Shannon Turner, a 39-year-old cabaret singer from Philadelphia, got COVID in late March or early April of 2020.

She was already living with psoriatic arthritis and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, autoimmune diseases for which she regularly took steroids and an immunotherapy. Such conditions may increase the risk of developing long COVID, researchers say.

This past summer, Turner got COVID again. Once again, she is extraordinarily tired and uses a walker for mobility.

Turner is determined to pursue her music career despite ongoing pain, dizziness and a racing heart rate, which regularly land her in hospital.

"I don't want to live my life in bed," she said.

[issteelballrunconfirmed]

JOJO NEWS: JOJODAY TIMEZONES AND STREAM INFORMATION

International tickets for JOJODAY are around 40 dollars (if not sold out).. And I know a lot of you aren’t going to be paying for that. Here’s some info about when JOJODAY will be happening in your timezone and some places where you can watch for free!

JOJODAY Timezones:

The JOJODAY event will be happening at 18:00 JST, with a preshow programme regarding the event starting an hour before at 17:00 JST. Below is a list of when JOJODAY itself will start in a few common timezones:

USA / CANADA -

Pacific (PDT): 2:00 AM

Mountain (MDT): 3:00 AM

Central (CDT): 4:00 AM

Eastern (EDT): 5:00 AM

EUROPE -

UK / Portugal (UTC +1): 10:00 AM

France / Germany / Italy (UTC +2) 11:00 AM

Greece / Finland / Russia (UTC +3): 12:00 PM

OCEANIA -

Australia (UTC +10): 19:00 PM

New Zealand (UTC +12): 21:00 PM

For a full list of timezones JOJODAY will be airing in please check the JOJO Wiki article here.

How to Watch JOJODAY Live, for Free!

Now, the legal way is to pay for an international ticket - But of course, that isn’t free. If you don’t wanna pay (me included) but you still want to watch JOJODAY live, you’re gonna have to watch somebody else stream it. Here are a few places where the event will be streaming:

Passione and FireLunar Discord Servers

CrustaceanSensation7 Twitch Stream

ohno_pleasedont Twitch Stream

Please keep this in mind though:

These details may be subject to change, and streams may suddenly be shut down due to the fact that streaming this event is illegal. If this happens, just jump to another stream.

Many more streams will be available for you to watch. The few I’ve mentioned are just to help you in case you can’t find any yourself.

I would recommend that you keep a few stream sources on hand during the event to make sure you can quickly jump between streams in the event of a takedown. Twitch has been the easiest platform to do this on from my experience.

Unlike Inherited Soul, JOJODAY will not have English subtitles even on international tickets. Unfortunately if any important information comes up we will have to guess what they’re saying until official English announcements come out.

That’s all from me for now! Good luck! 💚

[musingsofsarasate]

I would find it hilarious if Sleep Token were booked for Sunday Brunch (a Sunday morning TV programme in the UK that combines cookery, interviews with celebrities/musicians, and music. The guests sit together around a large table throughout the programme when they aren't participating in the cooking, being interviewed or performing.) ST wouldn't say anything, obviously, but the 4 men sat silently and ominously around the table in the studio with the other guests around them would be hilarious. Or Vessel, stood in his full costume, silently chopping whatever vegetables he was handed, looking straight at the camera and shrugging. When it comes to their interview, Tim and Simon would be so awkward and bemused trying and failing to get literally anything out of the boys, not sure if the whole thing was a prank or not.

[world-of-wales]

NEWS -

NEW PHASE FOR CENTRE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD RESEARCH ON ADBB!

The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood and the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) confirmed the expansion of the trial of a tool used by health visitors within routine checks to promote infant wellbeing, to eight new sites this year on Friday 24th January 2025.

The tool, known internationally as the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB), focuses on a baby’s social behaviours such as eye contact, facial expression, vocalisation, and activity levels to help practitioners and families better understand the ways babies express their feelings. Providing support at this critical time, when babies’ brains are developing faster than at any other time in their lives, can have a life-long impact.

Christian Guy, Executive Director of The Centre for Early Childhood, said:

“We know that warm, loving, responsive interactions with those closest to them during the earliest weeks and months of a baby’s life are crucial in promoting positive brain development.

Health visitors do such a vital job in our communities. I am delighted that we are now able to give more teams across the UK the support they need to help thousands of families to better understand their babies and build nurturing relationships, laying the strongest possible foundations for all that is to come in the years that follow."

The Princess of Wales saw health visitors in Denmark using the tool on a visit there in 2022 and The Centre for Early Childhood then worked with the iHV and Oxford University to test it in the UK.

Phase one explored the feasibility of implementing a modified version of the tool (m-ADBB) within health visitors’ routine 6-8-week checks with families and had overwhelmingly positive results.

Health visitors involved in phase one reported that the new training and tool, which required minimal additional time and could be embedded into routine activities with families, enabled them: To have more meaningful conversations with parents and carers about the emotional wellbeing of their baby;

To promote positive parent-infant interactions, attachment, and bonding; and

To identify those babies and families in need of greater support during this critical period of development.

The second phase, funded by a £210,000 grant from the Centre for Early Childhood, will build upon the findings of the first and will focus on the impact of the tool, and how it is experienced by parents. The evaluation will also look at whether more babies receive the additional support they need as a result of the tool helping health visitors to identify concerns as early as possible.

During phase two, iHV will be working with local sites – and others outside the trial – to consider how to embed, grow and sustain use of the tool after the pilot, if it is shown to be effective.