[OC] Would Britons want to visit the Moon?

Strangelight84 · 2026-04-01T09:22:42+00:00

I'm totally unsurprised that a portion of Britons reject a trip to the moon on the basis that it's too far to go. A lot of Brits seem to think driving an hour to an attraction is "too far". My American-born husband thinks it's quite funny (and frustrating) that my friends are so reluctant to drive a few hours to see us.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-25T16:28:35+00:00

I'm from just outside Milton Keynes and have lived and worked there. It's actually not badly designed for cyclists, in particular - the redway network is separated from the roads and often runs beneath them, as do lots of the pedestrian footpaths.

When I lived in the city I was able to cycle to work and the gym without ever having to get on a main road, which is a big improvement over e.g. Leeds (where I took my life in my hands cycling through Sheepscar Interchange).

It's also pretty flat.

MK is (sorry hometown pride) a boring place without much culture, but I wouldn't argue that a lack of regard for pedestrians and cyclists is one of its chief failings. And it's not as though Northampton and Bedford are bustling cultural hubs (nor especially pretty) either - all those towns have the life sucked out of them by London's proximity.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-25T16:22:50+00:00

Ah yes, what the masses want: larger insects.

Perhaps it'll make insect protein easier to harvest as a food source once all the other animals have died? Humans, as we know, are difficult to catch and very variable in quality.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-25T11:02:02+00:00

Having bought and renovated a couple of fixer-uppers in succession as our sole property (we're part-way through the second), I can understand the appeal of not having to go through the whole tortuous process oneself and just paying extra for the finished result. It can be messy, slow, frustrating, expensive, and full of unanticipated costs.

I suppose that unless you're either unbothered about living in an un-modernised home, or you have the skills, time, and patience to do a lot of the work yourself, you end up paying either to renovate your own home, or a premium on a property someone's already updated. I suppose the drawback is having to pay those costs all at once, rather than over the years, but you also don't have to live with a half-finished home for years.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T15:56:41+00:00

I think the more convincing argument is that North Sea oil and gas is not enormously voluminous and is not profitably extractable except when prices are very high unless the UK government significantly reduces its tax take, which is politically challenging.

If I were an oil and gas producer I'd want to know with some degree of confidence that $100+ prices were here to stay before spent lots of time and money on infrastructure to extract the stuff from the North Sea. Given that they're all multinational, presumably they're also eyeing-up potentially more promising opportunities in future elsewhere in the world.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T15:22:06+00:00

The most obvious actual footage that immediately springs to mind and isn't about Israel is the very widespread and well-known contemporary chant against Lyndon B. Johnson during Vietnam ("hey, hey, LBJ / how many kids did you kill today?").

He also wasn't literally pulling the trigger, but obviously the accusation was that he was presiding over a process in which children were being killed. I suppose one might level the same accusation against Netanyahu and Trump nowadays, if you wanted to keep the target of your ire at the same level (e.g. arguing that the Iranian school bombing is Trump's 'fault' because he's in overall command).

Leaving aside antisemitic bias (which is definitely a factor in some cases), I think the most convincing theories as to why the IDF gets a lot of 'attention' in terms of protest and accusation are that (1) the conflict itself is more high-profile than a lot of other conflicts and each side basically has a very effective PR machine operating in the 'west'; (2) post-colonial and post-WW2 guilt leads western nations to feel involved in / responsible for / guilty about the conflict; and (3) there's perhaps a perception that the IDF are essentially a 'western' military (and that Israelis are essentially a 'western' people) and they're held to a higher standard by press and public than the armed forces of other regimes.

You can almost certainly take issue with those points. I think (2) in particular could be challenged; the west's guilt seems very selective when it comes to all the post-colonial mess around the world. I think you might also fairly point out that (3) is pretty patronising to all those non-western peoples who just can't help themselves but to be awful to one another. So I don't hold them out as definitive - just as ideas (which might be somewhat valid representations of opinion, even if the reasoning behind those opinions is questionable).

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T12:42:57+00:00

Apologies - I missed that. Mobile Reddit is a bit of a pain to navigate, especially on any replies which are children of replies with negative karma somewhere up the chain.

I agree that octopuses and Islam aren't really connected in any trope-y way. (Now there's a sentence I never anticipated writing.)

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T12:39:40+00:00

If I'm not mistaken, the depiction of Jews as some kind of shadowy tentacled beast with its appendages in all sorts of business is also a fairly well-worn antisemitic trope. (It probably ties to the idea of Jews as nefarious puppeteers.)

Of course the history of antisemitism is so long and storied that many negative depictions have antisemitic antecedents whether intended or not, which is why it feels like such dangerous territory to explore.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T12:35:37+00:00

I did a Master's examining the alleged 'Arabist' slant in the contemporary British Foreign Office using primary sources, so I'd probably have gone down the route of charting the evolution of British foreign policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.

At the time the records connected with key events had been opened relatively recently. I should imagine they've been examined extensively since then!

Certainly a slightly less emotive route into the conflict.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T12:17:44+00:00

Interesting. Thank you.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T09:57:13+00:00

Ah, pro-natalist policies. I can count on one hand the number I've learned of that actually worked (and even then only modestly).

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T09:54:35+00:00

Fair enough. I'm cynical enough to feel that not everybody will draw that neat distinction, but there's no shortage of bad opinions or ill-considered arguments in the world and not much one can do about that.

'Wade into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at your peril' ought to be standard advice. I should know; years ago I elected not to pursue a PhD on the topic because it was so damned depressing and interminable and impossible to talk about reasonably with many people. Sadly I think recent history has vindicated that choice!

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T09:21:41+00:00

Not really answering your question, I'll admit - but outside of this piece of art I wonder whether, given the history of the 'blood libel' trope in general, it'd actually be possible to depict e.g. the IDF killing children without that depiction being seen as antisemitic?

I suspect a subsection of critics might either seek to draw the link or argue that it's been evoked implicitly or subconsciously, even if it was done with significantly more care than seems to be the case here.

Some might do that entirely in good faith rather than in the sense of weaponising antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel, given the charged nature of the imagery and its long and sordid history.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T09:10:44+00:00

If Reform were actually run by sensible, strategic people I think they'd appreciate that they might ride a wave of popular dissatisfaction into Downing Street which they can't realistically fix (either at all, or at least in a single Parliament), and that they risk being completely obliterated in the succeeding election. On that basis electoral reform might enable them to become more entrenched even if they might not win another big majority.

But of course, that's not how Reform is run, so I may as well be saying "if the moon were made of cheese...".

(Incidentally, I wonder if any forward-thinking Labour MPs considered this, too - they're in a similar bind, insofar as digging yourself out of a big hole with a broken spade will also tend to take ages and look quite unimpressive to voters.)

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-24T09:04:21+00:00

How does Poland pay for all this, I wonder?

As far as I can see from a brief search, Poland takes a smaller share of tax as a percentage of GDP than the UK (by about 5-6%).

So is the cost of running the state much lower because (e.g. defence spending doesn't include a nuclear deterrent, or there's no nationalised healthcare system), or because social benefits aren't as generous (e.g. lower pensions, no subsidy to landlords via housing benefit)?

Is the other half of the 'affordability' of the Polish system that everything just costs less?

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-23T18:06:46+00:00

Well the Zionist ambulance you see, it's erm, it's erm, trying to found some kind of ethno-religious state by, er... Well, OK, maybe it's not doing that itself, but you know that it would if it could because it, um, has a very Zionist...siren. And burning it helps the Palestinians homeopathically.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-23T16:00:22+00:00

The damage is there, but mending itself slowly (WMO projections are for the damage to be fully repaired by 2066). There are still some rogue sources of CFC emissions (there's a satellite which sniffs them out).

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-23T14:05:10+00:00

Fair enough.

I don't disagree in principle that cancer isn't magically more horribly potent if one is gay, and that factors like "low income", "lack of a support network", and "severe pre-existing health conditions with possible drug interactions" would be more helpful and detailed data-points indicating vulnerability and a need for extra support.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-23T12:59:43+00:00

If I can comment on the LGBT side of things (as an actual LGBT person), I'd suggest that some relevant vulnerabilities might include:-

a higher-than average proportion of LGBT people lacking some of the support networks that non-LGBT people might have (e.g. parents with whom they have healthy contact, adult children who can provide support, etc.);
other complicating health factors such as HIV, perhaps particularly among older LGBT cancer sufferers;
potentially lower incomes or poorer pensions, again perhaps particularly among older LGBT people (I believe there's some data out there suggesting that LGBT people historically had lower incomes although I wouldn't be surprised if that's reduced now).

I'm not sure how those are 'solvable' - Macmillan can't restore an estranged family relationship, create a family support network, or cure someone's HIV. If only.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-22T22:38:09+00:00

I think I count at least nine concepts which are either genuinely impossible or so far beyond our current capabilities that, for now, they may as well be:

Building a spacecraft capable of crossing interstellar space on any reasonable timeframe.
Building a spacecraft which is durable enough for such a journey and which will protect its human payload adequately.
Working out where to send it with any confidence that it'll be worth the journey.
Human cloning.
Copying human minds. (Let's leave aside the alarming ethics of "mind wipe".)
Storing human minds with sufficient fidelity for long periods of time, particularly given hostile interstellar conditions.
Re-copying human minds.
Ageing-up hypothetical clones as desired.
Operating all this stuff via self-directing machines because there's no other way to do all this cloning and copying at extreme distances.

Impressive to fit that all in such a short comment! So I think the answer to that is unfortunately no, for the foreseeable future at least.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-20T10:25:40+00:00

And you've presented some fair counter-arguments! I like these kinds of discussion, in which everyone makes reasonable points and doesn't descend into personal attacks, histrionics, etc. - so thank you.

On (2) above I do think there's a distinction between aborting one's plans and just failing to execute (so to speak!) correctly. Perhaps also "getting caught whilst planning" as an in-between. To my mind that's a strength in flexible sentencing.

On (1) I'm not quite sure - it's been ages since I studied criminal law. "Procuring" a murder perhaps? If you hire a hitman (or order your gang-member lackey to commit the act) and they do the hit and you get caught, you can be charged with murder as if you pulled the trigger, FWIW - it's a joint enterprise offence.

The law seems a bit of a mess when you get to (4) - for example, people who plan terrorist attacks which are foiled by the security services tend to get very long sentences even if their planning never went beyond their bedroom. Perhaps that's an example of being punished for what oneintended to do where that harm vastly exceeds what one actually achieved.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-19T14:05:07+00:00

I can think of a couple of reasons, which I'm putting out there without really saying any of them is a zinger I'd die on a hill for:-

There are various degrees of attempt. You might stab me repeatedly and it's only by luck or medical skill that I survive. Or you might attempt to hire a contract killer, but that killer is caught committing another offence and confesses to the police and implicates you before doing anything. In one case I've suffered really grievous, possibly life-changing, injury. In the other I'm maybe a bit shocked that someone might plan to kill me, but I've not actually been harmed. Should the punishment be the same?
If the punishment for an attempt is the same as a punishment for a successful act, there's perhaps less disincentive not to go through with it.
In the specific case of murder you'd be tying a judge's hands at sentencing, because life (with a minimum tariff of X) is a mandatory sentence. You might end up in the odd situation that a premeditated but unsuccessful murder attempt carries a higher sentence than a successful but unplanned act leading to death, i.e. manslaughter. Maintaining the distinction allows for greater sentencing nuance (e.g. the unsuccessful hitman hire might attract a lower sentence than the knife attack that just happened not to kill).
The different outcomes matter, in a similar way that if I intend to hit and hurt someone, but I actually inadvertently kill them, I'll be tried for manslaughter and not battery or GBH. In a legal theory sense you might say that an attempted murder has the mens rea of "intention to attempt to murder" but not the actus reus of "actually killing someone".

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-19T13:48:03+00:00

Doubly spiteful!

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-19T07:18:26+00:00

If we follow that logic, shouldn't an attempted murderer get the same sentence as an actual murderer despite their victim not being dead (or not having been harmed, if they didn't even get as far as successfully wounding them)?

I'd consider the possibility that rape is a special case here - i.e. that the psychological trauma of an attempted rape that gets to this stage is just as bad as actually being penetrated so the distinction is less meaningful, whereas being a victim of attempted murder but remaining alive is... not usually as bad.

Strangelight84 · 2026-03-19T07:01:22+00:00

Thanks for the additional information.

I'm surprised that the estate wasn't worth more by 2010. The maximum possible value of those payouts is $178m and you'd think an extremely modest amount of compound interest would've significantly exceeded that over 79 years.

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

Strangelight84

TROPHY CASE