Vayne

@vayne42

Just this guy, you know? He/They

678 Folgt231 Follower243 Posts

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Vayne@vayne42· 15d

If only that was a thing she'd thought to acknowledge in the review itself, maybe as some sort of 'final thoughts' capstone. Pic unrelated.

A screenshot of a paragraph from 'An uncomplicated man', Emily Wilson's review of Nolan's The Odyssey film adaptation (from https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man). The text in the screenshot reads:
Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book or show up in cinemas to watch Tom Holland may go on to study ancient Greek. Perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments. Nolan, who studied English at University College London – where students still study The Odyssey as a first year ‘foundational text’ – is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.

Vayne@vayne42· 16d

Vayne@vayne42· 23d

Picture of a dog getting its head smooshed with a combination head pat and chin scratch, captioned "oooh who's an edgy boy? who's an edgy boy?! yes you are! oooh what a hot take! your statements are so controversial! what an edgy boy"

Vayne@vayne42· Jul 10

... was it something I said?

$A screenshot of the user profile for @davehaterofracism.bsky.social showing that he is now blocking me.$

Vayne@vayne42· Jul 10

The 'Officer down!' star meme with the text edited to say 'WIDDECOMBE DOWN!'
A large yellow five pointed star sits in the upper middle of the image with googly eyes and a widely grinning mouth, expressing extreme enthusiasm. Two disembodied thumbs ups float to the right and left of it, and it is surrounded by balloons and party poppers, clearly celebrating a major achievement. The text "WIDDECOMBE DOWN" has been overlaid across it diagonally, from mid-lower-left to mid-upper-right.

Vayne@vayne42· Jun 26

"But then something very strange happened..."

Three pictures of the Lincoln memorial reflecting pool taken from above on different days, showing the progression of the algae bloom. On the left there is no algae, the pool is full of clear blue water. In the centre, the pool is light green with some darker spots. On the right, the pool is much greener with large dark spots at the top and bottom.

Vayne@vayne42· May 31

Listen to @bloodwork.show

A scene from episode 25 of the 1988 anime adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Ansbach, a caucasian man with short brown hair wearing an Imperial officer's uniform (black long-sleeved shirt with decorative silver cuffs, collar and shoulder/neckpieces) is standing in a dark room holding a futuristic heavy weapon on his right shoulder, with both hands on the foregrip/trigger. His mouth is open, his eyes are closed.

Vayne@vayne42· May 31

Hmmm, is there any possible reason that Compass might have some sort of partisan interest in the Green party stepping down to give a Labour candidate, or Andy Burnham in particular, a better chance of winning?

Screenshot of part of an article from Wikipedia titled Compass (think tank). The text of the article reads "Compass is a British centre-left pressure group, aligned with the Labour Party which describes itself as: "'An umbrella grouping of the progressive left whose sum is greater than its parts". Like the formally Labour-affiliated think tank the Fabian Society it is a membership-based organisation and thus seeks to be a pressure group and a force for political organisation and mobilisation."

Screenshot of part of an article from Wikipedia, titled "Mainstream (political organisation)"

The excerpted text is as follows: "Mainstream Labour or simply Mainstream is a British centre-left political network associated with the British Labour Party, co-founded by Open Labour and Compass in September 2025 to reverse what it sees as Labour's "clear drift to the right" under Keir Starmer to prevent the rise of right-wing populism in the UK. Ideologically described as sitting on the soft left of the Labour Party, Mainstream describes itself as the home of Labour's "radical realists" and promotes a democratic socialist platform which includes taxing wealth, introducing democratic reforms and placing key utilities into public ownership."

A red rectangular box has been added around the organisation Compass in the screenshot.

Screenshot of part of the "Mainstream (political organisation)" article from wikipedia.
The screenshot shows the heading "Membership" and the text:
"Described as belonging to the Labour Party's soft left, Mainstream Labour's membership is formed from a broader alliance of Labour politicians on the left and soft left of the Labour Party as well as the more progressive elements of New Labour, with the network's organisers describing it as a broad-church of the progressive left. Notable founding members of the group include Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, Momentum founder Jon Lansman, Tribune Group chair Clive Efford, Blue Labour's Jon Cruddas, New Labour ministers Clare Short and John Denham, Tony Blair advisor Geoff Mulgan, Ed Miliband advisor Stewart Wood, Open Labour founder Alex Sobel and left-wing MPs associated with former leader Jeremy Corbyn, including Clive Lewis, Dawn Butler, Olivia Blake and Paula Barker. The network also has the support of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock."

A red rectangle has been drawn around the name Andy Burnham in the screenshot.

Vayne@vayne42· May 29

Labour think the exact same thing, they just talk about it with less bombast than Farage.

Vayne@vayne42· May 18

@killjamesbond.bsky.social With the imminent return to heist season, I'd like to recommend 1991's Hudson Hawk. Featuring Bruce Willis as a cat burglar coerced into a series of heists to steal various DaVinci works, the real appeal is Richard E Grant & Sandra Bernhardt competing to chew the scenery.

Richard E Grant in a nice suit and waistcoat standing in an art gallery with his hands in the air shouting "One hundred million clams!" Andie McDowell is in the back right of the shot watching with surprise while in the middle of a phone call.

Sandra Bernhardt in a hat with an extremely wide brim (red on the top and around the edge, white underneath), shoulders bare with a fancy red dress, ears decorated with long dangling gold and pearl earrings, standing in a fancy art gallery confidently declaring "One hundred million and one, Waldo."

Richard E Grant in a different fancy suit sat in the back of a limousine grinning in an extremely confident, predatory manner, arms spread out along the armrests, announcing "What can I tell you. I'm the villain."

Richard E Grant in a different fancy suit (white with blue pinstripes this time) stands on the left of the shot grinning like he's about to bite and holding some sort of device. Next to him to his right is an angry-looking Sarah Bernhardt wearing a purple dress with a matching purple ornamental head thing that looks kind of like a swirly doodle halo made of purple fabric behind her head. Her hair is frizzy and her mouth is wide open as she yells "Bad Hawk!" into the face of Bruce Willis, the back of whose head and shoulder is just visible on the left hand side of the picture.

Vayne@vayne42· May 14

Cartoon by Mattie Lubchansky depicting Ed Zitron as a gameshow host standing on a stage flipping a big switch, with his other hand cupped to his ear. Both positions for the switch are labelled with '?'. Behind the host is an illuminated sign reading "Is that good?". In the foreground numerous audience members can be seen, with speech bubbles indicating they're shouting what appears to be the gameshow catchphrase: "IS! THAT!! GOOD!!!"

Vayne@vayne42· May 10

A picture of Marsha, a tortoiseshell cat with a mostly white body, with orange/tabby patches on her face around her eyes and an orange tail. She is looking down at the camera from halfway up a wooden ladder, climbing onto a loft bed. She is standing on the toes of her back feet on a lower rung, resting her front paws on the rung above as she leans through the ladder.

Vayne@vayne42· May 4

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 26

Also, if we're talking specifically about these universities' role in reproducing social hierarachies, it's worth looking past just the offer rates to the admissions rates - how many students actually take up those places. And that skews a LOT harder in favour of independent school students:

The same table as in the previous post, comparing undergraduate admission numbers for Oxford and Cambridge for 2020-2024. Additional columns have been added to calculate the % of applying students who are admitted, and the rate of students who apply who get admitted. Oxford compares 'State' and 'Indepenent', Cambridge compares 'Comprehensive' and 'Independent' due to their providing more detailed figures. Both tables show significantly higher rates of admission for Independent school students vs State school students, with the peak in 2024 as 16.26% (1 admission per 6.15 applications) from State schools vs 22.09% (1 admission per 4.53 applications) from Independent schools for Oxford, and 15.91% (1 admission per 6.29 applications) from State schools vs 20.32% (1 admission per 4.92 applications) from Independent schools.

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 26

Woah, woah, woah, that is NOT true. The offer rates for Oxbridge are consistently slanted in favour of independent schools over state schools. Here's the breakdown for 2020-2024 for Oxford and Cambridge, taken from www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-... and www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/before...

Table showing the breakdown of applications, offers and admittances to Oxford and Cambridge universities. Oxford is divided between 'State' and 'Independent' and shows between 1% to 5% greater offer rates for independent school students compared to state-educated. Cambridge is divided between 'Comprehensive' and 'Independent' as their reporting gives a more detailed breakdown of application source, and shows closer offer rates but still approximately 1% higher offer rates for Independent students.

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 1

Gonna have to lower the Guantanamo McDonalds flag to quarter-mast at this rate!

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 1

Ye gods, this is the best they're offering: "a sense of hope", "a belief that things can and will get better". No actual change, no improvements, only vibes. (Does anyone else hear the faint, tinny echoes of D-Ream playing when they read this?)

Text: "“But even more people will feel once again a sense of hope, a belief that things can and will get better, feel that the promise of renewal can become a reality, and my government will make it that reality.”" taken from https://archive.is/WQURR because fuck the Guardian, transphobic pricks that they are.

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 1

Apparently we're doing "proofs" now.

Text: "In his new year message, the prime minister said voters would begin to see their lives improving in 2026 in what his chief adviser, Morgan McSweeney, has called “the year of proof”." taken from https://archive.is/WQURR because we don't give the transphobes at the Guardian clicks.

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 1

"AI supercycle" is certainly *a* way to describe "Nvidia offers deal to rent hypothetical future datacentre from neocloud company > neocloud take Nvidia contract to investors > investors loan neocloud money to build datacentre > neocloud pays on the loan to Nvidia to buy GPUs > Nvidia books profit"

$Text " Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/0a07cbc3-dac4-4b89-9f26-038deb833060?utm_social_handle_id=FuckOff&utm_social_post_id=FuckOff Shaz Ansari, professor of strategy and innovation at Cambridge university, said a company’s capacity for successful reinvention “derives from business-specific agility: the way it handles failure, the way it reallocates resources”. “Nokia has got the rare ability to cut off businesses when they’re not working,” he added. “It has been able to pivot not [just] across products, but across industries.” Hotard, who succeeded Lundmark in April, has sought to position Nokia to capitalise on the “AI supercycle” that is catalysing hundreds of billions of dollars of data centre spending each year. Nokia’s optical technology enables information to be passed between data centres, and it produces routers that enable cloud-based services. The latest transformation caught the interest of chipmaker Nvidia, widely seen as the kingmaker of the AI revolution. News of the investment from the world’s most valuable company sent Nokia’s shares up by 25 per cent. Today the group is valued at about €32bn, albeit that is still a fraction of the dizzy heights scaled during the heyday of the 3310." copied from https://www.ft.com/content/0a07cbc3-dac4-4b89-9f26-038deb833060$

Vayne@vayne42· Jan 1

Ahh yes, the two genders:

Megabyte, from the CGI animated TV series ReBoot

Hexadecimal, from the CGI animated TV series ReBoot

Vayne@vayne42· Dec 6

Evergreen headline, unfortunately for us all:

Headline cropped down to just say "Tony Blair plotting"

Vayne@vayne42· Nov 8

Describe your cats personalities with one photo

Picture of Marsha (mostly-white cat with tortoiseshell patches) sat on a mat, biting my hand as I stroke her chin and belly.

Vayne@vayne42· Aug 15

You can't just namedrop Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau without including his picture.

Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau from Warhammer 40k's 1st Edition (Rogue Trader). He is a grimacing human with a moustache and a long mane of beard sticking out from his jawline, staring at the viewer with a look like they just questioned the virtue of his mother. He wears a fedora and a long duster-like coat over some kind of shirt and trousers. The duster has a checkerboard pattern along its hem. The shirt has a yin-yang symbol just below the collar. He is wearing dark boots with what look like white ankle warmers, and thick gloves. He holds a boltgun single-handed in his right hand, and a chainsword in his left.

Vayne@vayne42· Nov 24

Name a game with a 10/10 soundtrack Homeworld

Box art for the 1999 video game Homeworld, depicting the giant mothership surrounded by frigates and fighters.

Vayne@vayne42· Nov 15

Stop! If you see this post, repost with your cat(s) Marsha