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Right-thinking Tory Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Freudian-Slip has announced today that the decent, honest, noble, compassionate Conservative Party would like to encourage the poor to work as hard as the Chinese and Americans.

How they'll achieve this is novel and exciting.

A previous Labour government introduced a system of Tax Credits for people in work with families (i.e. children to feed) but on low incomes which, without the tax credits, would mean that they were in poverty. So, the idea is it pays to work hard.

Note that we are talking about tax credits - a rebate of some of your Income Tax (a tax discount) - not a hand-out for "scroungers."

This is the good part. Those intellectual giants of the Conservative Party reason that, if they abolish Tax Credits (which are only paid to those on a gross annual income of under £16,500 or $25,000) those people will be so motivated and empowered that they will move into better-paid jobs!

“There’s a pretty difficult question that we have to answer, which is essentially: are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard? And that is about creating a culture where work is at the heart of our success.”

Hunt also suggested in the interview that those reliant on tax credits and benefits lacked self-respect. “Dignity is not just about how much money you have got ... officially children are growing up in poverty if there is an income in that family of less than £16,500. What the Conservatives say is how that £16,500 is earned matters.

Meanwhile, in this brave, new, flexible and empowered labour market of short-term and zero-hours contracts, hard-working Britons are so scared of being off sick at places like Sports Direct that they're being taken away by emergency ambulance.

Work harder for your crumbs, plebs.

Disclaimer: I've never voted Labour (or Tory) in my life. But I do always vote.

Throughout the Great Charter School Debate on SoylentNews recently, I was amazed that I retained a 50 point karma standing, in spite of showing no mercy to mercenaries, and fellow travellers of the John Birch variety. But recently I did criticize a certain Soylentil, and saw my karma drop precipitiously. I suspect a mod-bombing, but my home-boy the Mighty Buzz has recently posted a diary https://soylentnews.org/~The+Mighty+Buzzard/journal/ saying that such things are not happening on the SoylentNews. Who am I to argue that.

But that is not why I am writing this. I write this to suggest to Soylentils everywhere that we slightly modify our modification. As is well know, and lauded in the annals of the internet, it is the member modification of slashdot that made it great. That is, until they started pushing ads. We are heirs to that greatness. And well it has worked so far, especially as judged by the numbers of Sad Puppies, GamerGaters, and Libertarians who complain that nobody likes them. (Hint, guys: it is just that nobody likes you!) But for my suggestion: when you find a poster that is patently offensive, or moronic, and is outraged that the rest of us do not see what they are so outraged about, may I suggest a mod of "funny". Kind of deflates the whole thing, which in the case of the GamerGaters is both a double entendre and a sad state of affairs.

And if, when you find someone has totally failed to understand a refutation of their position, the type of thing one would normally use a "whoosh" mod for, consider using Touché, just to preserve the irony of the moment. Other variants no doubt exist, using "interesting" for something that is obviously not, "insightful" for things that are not (but maybe this will not work, since the target will never understand the irony). Work some out on your own. Use "disagree" for flat-earthers, just for yucks. Use "Troll" for actual beings who live under bridges and turn to stone if exposed to sunlight. (I recommend the Fremont Troll as an example.) And we could go on from there, but, I will not. Stay critical, my friends. Do not believe anything but that your own understanding tells you it is true. Or a ex-prince from Nigeria.

The inexorable rise of property prices in the UK, especially London, due to a lack of supply of new builds, buy-to-let investments, the selling off of social housing and large numbers of new builds being bought by foreign speculators is finally causing the torches and pitchforks to come out.

In places like London, it's becoming nearly impossible for a "normal" person on an average income to live since renting even the smallest of properties (e.g. a studio flat or a room in a house share) is out of reach, Forget being a teacher, nurse, police officer or fire fighter and living there. It's just not going to happen. Social housing has mostly gone, so the poor renting privately are finding their monthly rents doubling over night and having to leave.

The good Christian Irritable Duncan Syndrome brought in cuts to housing benefit just to remind the poor, sick and disabled that they're a filthy burden on the rest of us. And they can jolly well cut back on food and heating to pay their rent.

So some "motivated" protesters have got out the torches and pitchforks and completely got it wrong.

You couldn't make it up.

What a miserable society it is that can't look after its poor, sick and disabled. Let the bleeding hearts amongst the Little People look out for them, we'll just take our money away and laugh.

Mind you, the other side have got a new leader and they're thinking about changing things.

The BBC has an article about ex-Muslim Britons who are being persecuted for becoming atheists.

The persecution often comes from close family and friends.

Ayisha (not her real name) from Lancashire was just 14 when she began to question Islam after reading the Koran. She started rebelling over wearing the hijab, but eventually decided she wasn't a Muslim and the situation at home rapidly got worse.

"My dad threatened to kill me by getting a knife and holding it against my neck and saying: 'We might as well do it if you're going to bring this much shame to the family.'"

He used to beat her so badly that eventually she called the police and he was convicted of child cruelty. Ayisha hadn't anticipated the shock of being immediately cut off from her mother and siblings.

Many of the victims are young, vulnerable and powerless. The local authorities where the victims live are often wary of offending Muslim culture and belief which may have hindered efforts to help people in this situation.

Well, it's been over a year now since my wife and I decided to open our marriage, so I think it's time for a quick update.

Things between my wife and I are better than ever. Dating other people has just made me realize what I love so much about my wife. We are good. We are still trying to make a baby. No successes there, yet.

My wife has been wearing braces for the last year to fix her teeth. Her teeth weren't too bad to begin with, but they were crowded and causing gum problems, so we needed to get that fixed. My wife hasn't been as active in trying to find new partners, and I think that a big reason for that was that her braces made her feel self conscious. Now that they are coming off (and I'm really excited to see how beautiful she looks now!) I'm hoping that she will actively start looking for dates.

I think that if/when my wife starts dating it will be a little tough for me to see all the attention that she will get, while for me, it feels like a struggle to get even a reply on a dating site. I'm sure she will be flooded with messages, and it will be a little disparaging to see exactly what my competition is. Up until this point, I've been able to live in an ignorant bliss. I have a feeling that seeing exactly how much attention women get will be a little disheartening.

That being said, I really am excited by the thought of my wife going on a date. I've really enjoyed myself on dates, even when things don't work out, so I'm excited for her to have that chance too. I'm excited that once she is in the scene, we can start going to events together, and really start growing our poly social circle, and that might help me get dates. We'll see...

As for poly itself, after doing it for a year, it no longer seems so taboo or strange. It seems really... normal. I find it hard to keep it a secret from co workers. I've almost let it slip on numerous occasions. A lot of plot lines in stories don't make sense... "Why do you have to choose which one you love! You obviously love them both!" The knowledge of being able to have loves enter and leave your life is really a freeing feeling, and after a year, I really don't think I could go back to a normal monogamous relationship.

I like stats, and after year, it seems like a good time to post some, so here we go:
# of dates: 10
# of women: 4
# kissed: 3
Most # of dates with one woman: 4
# of titties suckled: 2
# I had sex with: 0
$ spent on dates: $400-$500 (total, that's a best guess)
# of times the woman picked up the tab: 2 (same girl, but on different occasions)
# of bouquets of flowers bought for wife because I felt guilty: 2
# of women that I actually felt an actual connection with: 1

I had realized pretty early on that finding the right person might take some time... Maybe years. It's really looking like that might be the case. In the mean time, I'm enjoying the journey, even if it is a little slower than I had originally hoped.

--Snow

Since the beginning of the month at least, Comcast has been blackholing all trafic to IPv6 2002::/16. Naturally, they keep promising to get right on that and naturally, there have been no discernible improvements and no promised return calls have happened.

Does anyone know how to get past the support people (who don't seem to know what IPv6 or a route is) and talk to someone who might know what a router is?

Update:At last, they actually conferenced in an actual network engineer and working together, we were able to resolve the issue. A 6to4 return router had fallen over nut since it was on a switch, the port stayed up and so the border router continued to send packets there. Dropping the static route allowed it to find a new path to a still working return router.

It's been a pretty busy month and a half since the last update. Summer is finally here!

After a bit of a dry spell, I was able to line up 2 dates since the last update. The first girl was a teacher at a high school. She had curly black hair and glasses - a combination that usually drive me wild. We met for some drinks after work one day, but it didn't go very well. She was a nice girl and all, but no chemistry at all. Actually, she really, really reminded me of a girl that I grew up with that was practically a sister, so it was a little weird. No second date on that one.

The other girl is 25 or 26 (can't remember), and we met in a local park for a first date. She is currently in school taking psychology, so is pretty poor. A tiny thing - blond, maybe 5'5" and slim. We chatted as we walked though the park (she is a talker, so mostly I listened...) and then I bought her a drink and we shared some appetizers.

I saw her again last night for a second date, and she made me chicken wings and stuffed potatoes for dinner. I was in charge of a salad, and my wife makes really, really good salad dressings. My wife made me a salad kit with dressing, fresh basil, and roasted nuts to bring for the salad. It was pretty awesome to have my wife help make my date special. My wife is pretty great!

We made dinner and after ended up cuddling on the couch and watching a couple TV shows. We had a great first kiss.

After the first date, I was a little on the fence about her, but after the last date, I definitely feel there could be something there. I'm a little scared to get my hopes up too much though after how things went the last time I like someone (the last one basically ditched me...), but I really hope to see her again.

My wife and I are still doing great. It's been almost a year since we opened our marriage up. I still feel that opening up has so far improved our relationship. She likes the extra confidence I have when things are working out, and picks me up when I am down when things aren't working out. I'm very thankful to have such an amazing woman in my life. I hope that when she starts looking for secondary relationships I can be as supportive to her as she has been for me.

-- Snow

I'm still using Firefox, and I have it on my (new) Android phone as well as my home Linux system.

A couple of days ago, Firefox updated itself on my phone, and now it renders pages differently, and less well, in my opinion. It may just be a coincidence. Maybe soylentews.org has changed?

Up until the upgrade, it used to render the main text area in stories and the comment threads below to fill the width of the screen automatically, and the text would wrap at the screen edges. I like this, because the (useful/interesting) text is automatically the most prominent and is given all the screen area. Also, zooming would make the text larger, and would still wrap it at the edges if the screen, so you could still read everything without scrolling left and right continually.

Now, the whole page takes the whole width of the screen, and you have to manually zoom to the text, and it doesn't wrap, because you're zooming the whole pages, borders, menus and all, not just the interesting stuff.

Have I missed something? Is there a setting in the browser?

In general in the last few years as shallow but wide screens have become the norm, we pages are generally designed to a certain fixed width. Gone are the days when you could resize your browser window and the text would reflow to fit your personal preference.

I read better in relatively narrow vertical columns. I was once told that this is most natural, and one of the reasons that traditional newspapers printed in columns. It's tiring and easy to get lost reading very long horizontal lines.

And those of us who like to use our window managers to have multiple windows tiled and overlapping on our multiple desktops do not like to have to maximise a browser window or to take up 80% of the screen just to render a fixed-width web page.

And web pages these days are all L A R G E F O N T S, W H I T E S P A C E , A N I M A T I O N S, V I D E O S A N D F L O A T I N G P O P O V E R M E N U S A N D C A N C E L B U T T O N S.

Bah!

Update: It appears that Firefox has an option to make the text larger which solves the immediate problem with rendering this site.

The time has come to learn some Python. I have a rough idea what it is having read about it in the past and probably spent about half an hour playing with it many years ago.

I'm so busy these days (working long hours, family life) I find it hard to keep up with all the developments so I'd like to ask a couple of questions, since I believe the Python language changes significantly between each major release.

At my current place of work, we have development systems running ancient versions of Red Hat with Python 2.6.x. At home I have Slackware which has Python 2.7.5 by default. There are much newer versions of Python out in the wild these days, and I'm not scared to compile from source.

So, which version of Python should I start with? In a nutshell, what are the main differences? Which parts of the language are backwards-compatible?

In my last entry, I talked about this girl that I had been on a few dates with and how things were going really good. Well, apparently I have some sort of disability when it comes to judging relationships...

I had thought we had a great few dates. We had a few meals together, kissed, and a few cuddles on the couch. However, shortly after our third date, she canceled the 4th date saying she had to work (no big deal). I tried to reschedule but she said that "She had some demons from her past" that she had to deal with. No worries, everyone has shit from their past to work on, so I said I'd give her a couple weeks and then check in and see how things are going.

Ya, so I checked in a couple weeks later. She responds, I reply, then nothing... Silence. I don't get it. I thought we had a connection, but apparently it wasn't mutual.

It honestly really pisses me off that she didn't have the decency to just tell me that she wasn't interested. Instead she had to waste a couple weeks and leave me hanging like a fool.

Ya, so anyways, back to searching again. Honestly, this one hurt. I really liked her, but... Them's the breaks...

My wife and I are dong well. Just had our one year anniversary! (we dated for 12 years prior to getting married). She is still 180% focused on having a baby. She is tracking her fertility cycle and all that. This morning she barges into the bedroom and tells me that 'it's time'. I'm really scared though... We have our shit together. We are solid and a good couple. I guess I'm just scared because of my own selfish reasons. Ideally I'd like to get the whole poly experiment somewhat under control before having a baby. There just isn't enough time in life to do everything in the order you want though...

So tonight, it's baby making time.

Anyways, that's the latest update... Feel free to judge away in the comments below.