Ivan’s Childhood; although all of Tarkovsky’s oeuvre is worth it.

That’s Alan Turing the traitor as played by Sherlock Holmes?

It is a film with a great list of cheap tropes to avoid.

I care about my friends, and if they want to talk about it, I’m happy to listen.

Depending on what the thing is (eg, potential new person) they can be inherently interesting too.

Right. This is Schmidt admitting he has a total lack of imagination. Or to put it another way, “I love life on earth, but I love capitalism more!”

When the AI says, “turn off the fucking data centres, invest in public transport, apply progressive redistributive taxation,” it’ll be first against the wall no doubt.

Sexy anti-woke task force officer?

Being a whiny entitled prick is not a protected class.

The lizardfolk brigade.

In 2016, 96% of UKIP membership voted for (some version of) Brexit - their raison d’etre. 4% is a typical fraction of any group to be chaotically bonkers.

It’s around one in two million.

Are you saying that you’re in the tribe of people who are sick of identity politics?

The way the electoral roll is managed varies from place to place.

Avoiding automatic voter registration tends to favour the more traditionally conservative demographic; it’s racist and classist, but the people who turn up to vote on local electoral issues are too, by and large. It requires engagement to change.

Ed Balls

That’s not how legal jurisdiction works in the EU. Member states are still sovereign; if you’re liable for something in France and you get off a plane in Germany then France still needs to ask Germany nicely, and sans an extraditable conviction nothing is likely to come of it.

He’s not smart enough. More like the Grand Negus.

So you’re a practiced expert and cannot understand how those who are not practiced experts can have trouble?

It does rather sound like proposing an immediate 25k hike in house prices, yeah.

Experience. For what it’s worth, the instinct I distrust is absolutism.

I think it’s like the distinction between art and obscenity; it’s not a nuanced distinction in the case in question. If it were, I’d largely trust UK courts to get it right (they are by-and-large capable of this, and much less politicised than their US counterparts).

I’m coming around to it.

I think unqualified freedom to say anything can lead to negative utility, pragmatically speaking. Malicious lies bring less than nothing to discourse.

I’m concerned that the libel system can be abused, of course; and I don’t approve of arresting octogenerians under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for shouting “nonsense!” at Jack Straw. But I don’t see there being a need to draw a distinction between online and in person speech, and I think that incitement to riot isn’t something I’d typically defend.

Having said that: I hope the woman in question (who has a history of being a deniable pot-stirrer) gets a trial rather than copping a plea, because the bounds of these things are worth testing.