Charlie Stross Profile picture
Sep 17, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Honestly, the BEST solution to Tory whining about the UK’s voice not being heard in the EU would have been to fission into NI, Wales, Scotland, and England back in the 1990s. Then we could have had 4 seats on the Council of Ministers, 4 votes, all with about 90% common interests.
With full Schengen membership on top, the 4 former UK states would have had free movement, no internal borders, and disproportionate combined lobbying weight in Brussels.
Instead? Because of misplaced Imperial nostalgia we’re doomed to get the worst possible outcome: fragmentation of the UK without the benefits of EU trade links and soft power.

All it needed was a determination to *lead* the EU, rather than sulk. But the Tories screwed up.
Note that this is how it eventually worked out for the Hapsburg Empire: Czechia, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Bulgaria … all EU members today.

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More from @cstross

Oct 2, 2022
Any reasonable "plan for growth" for the UK needs to start with funding for free meals for children, from childcare through secondary school—and also a drastic rise in the education budget. Childhood malnutrition stunts physical and intellectual growth, cripples the workforce.
/1
While I'm on that topic, sick people can't work. We need to renationalize the NHS, properly fund it, BEGIN training the next cohort of healthcare workers (it takes a decade), and take COVID19 seriously: HEPA air filtration everywhere, masks in unventilated or crowded spaces.

/2
The government focus on higher ed as providing skills for work is misplaced: British businesses have skimped on employee vocational training and apprenticeships for decades, and THAT needs to be fixed, along wit spurious academic credentialism. (Oh, and abolish student loans.)
/3
Read 9 tweets
Jun 24, 2022
The trouble with utopian struggles is you can't create utopia: utopia can never fail, it can only be failed. And in event of failure, the zealots always double-down.

We've seen this in the UK with Brexit.

Now we're going to see it from Christian Dominionists in the USA.

/1
It's going to get REALLY ugly.

Roe v. Wade is just the beginning.

All the progressive legislation of the past century is up for grabs.

Only there's a modern surveillance tech state to tap for enforcement.

And McConnell, Pence talking about a federal abortion ban.

/2
It won't stop with abortion. There'll be a rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, contraception, interracial marriage, religion-free public schools.

The end game is the installation of a privileged national religion (via selective bypass of the constitution rather than outright repeal).

/3
Read 7 tweets
May 8, 2022
Big idea here:

The US right's war on abortion is part of a bigger fight—their war on the Enlightenment era concept of rights. (Alito's ruling puts a lot of other rights at risk, not just abortion.)

The solution is a basic right to bodily autonomy and self-determination.

/1
The right to bodily autonomy means that you, and nobody else, have the right to control your own body.

Nobody should be allowed to torture you, harvest your organs, perform surgery on you without consent, force you to be pregnant against your will, or brainwash you.

/2
I think [almost] all of us can agree that the right to bodily autonomy is desirable for ourselves?

If it is a universal right then the right to abortion is a natural consequence of it. So is the right to contraception. Transgender rights too.

It's a wellspring of rights.

/3
Read 6 tweets
May 6, 2022
A trolley problem variant:

A streetcar is out of control and is heading down a line where it will kill two people. However, it's about to cross points where you can divert it onto a track where it will only kill one person.

Do you pull the switch?
HINT: this is a trick question!

Because the trolly problem I'm talking about is called an ectopic pregnancy.

In an ectopic pregnancy the embryo implants outside the uterus. It's a disaster: both the mother and embryo will die.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectopic_p…

/2
In an ectopic pregnancy "pull the lever, divert the streetcar" saves the pregnant person's life, but kills the embryo. But YOU CAN'T SAVE THEM BOTH. If you don't pull the switch, both of them WiLL die.

There are roughly 200,000 ectopic pregnancies in the USA every year.

/3
Read 5 tweets
Apr 25, 2022
The big picture:

Boris Johnson was installed solely to deliver a hard Brexit. He was to be the fall guy when things went wrong.

But COVID unexpectedly gave him a new crisis to cling to.

The lie that COVID is over means Boris is no longer needed.

So the Owners want rid of him.
He's a clown, a patsy, an unscrupulous money-grubbing hack, and therefore easy for the real controllers to manipulate.

As for who they are …? Look to the press barons and the private equity oligarchs who made bank under Brexit and COVID.
The folks who orchestrated Brexit aren't brilliant.

They didn't foresee the pandemic, a global supply-chain shock, Putin going nuts, and an energy crisis.

They didn't plan for double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy, or a rise in labour unrest.

(Never mind global warming.)
Read 4 tweets
Apr 14, 2022
Midlife crisis. Musk can't buy a supercar (he's got a supercar *factory*) and the hot pop starlet girlfriend dumped him for Chelsea Manning, so what's a bro gonna do? Shitpost!

/1
He'll wake up with a hangover in a Vegas hotel suite, with a jacuzzi full of Krug and hookers, someone else's kidney, and Facebook, after Bezos outbids him for Twitter just to fuck with his head.

/2
Now he'll have to figure out how to monetize it quick, as the user base is ageing and dying (Facebook is Angry Grandpa socmedia).

First option: move the servers into the cloud. And by the cloud, I mean adding FB servers to the Starlink satellite cloud.

/3
Read 4 tweets

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