Futurology Today

But I was told Starmer was just going to be Corbyn but more competent and not an evil EU leaver? I was told he was merely Corbyn in a suit?

Could the liberals have been...gasp...wrong????

Keir Starmer is facing a rebellion over his plan to use direct deductions from people’s bank accounts and the cancellation of driving licences as part of a government crackdown on welfare fraud and over-claiming.

In an attempt to claw back the annual £9.7bn in benefit overpayments made by the Department for Work and Pensions due to fraud or error, the government has adopted Conservative plans for debt recovery.

A fraud, error and recovery bill would give the DWP the power to require banks to provide data to help identify when an applicant is not meeting the eligibility criteria for a benefit for which they have applied.

The bill would allow the government to demand bank statements to identify debtors who have sufficient funds to repay what they owe through fraud or error in a claim. The DWP would then have the power to recover money directly from bank accounts of those not on benefits or in PAYE employment who are identified as having the means to pay.

Those who repeatedly fail to repay funds could fall prey to a suspended DWP disqualification order that would disqualify them from holding a driving licence.

Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for work and pensions, has said the powers are necessary to deal with a “broken welfare system” but she is facing opposition from her own backbenches.

Amendments tabled by the Labour MP for Poole, Neil Duncan-Jordan, that would force the government to drop key strands of the bill are supported by a growing number of MPs in Starmer’s party.

The amendments, backed by 17 named Labour MPs, would ensure that only those suspected of fraud rather than being the victim of an error were subjected to surveillance, “allowing the government to target criminality without monitoring the public”, Duncan-Jordan said.

The Labour MP is also proposing to remove the power to apply to a court to strip people of their driving licences due to debt, describing the policy as a “poverty penalty”.

Writing in the Guardian, Duncan-Jordan, who was elected for the first time in 2024, accused Starmer’s government of “resurrecting Tory proposals for mass spying on people who receive state support”.

He writes that the legislation “would compel banks to carry out financial surveillance of welfare recipients”, adding that “given the volume of accounts involved, this will be completed by an algorithm”.

1. Larian is working on two games right now and restructuring the company around making both of those projects flow.
2. They've got a new narrative team meant to improve the work processes of detecting issues with player reactivity in complex RPGs.
3. Vincke has a lot to say about machine learning, and it's somehow both vague and nuanced. He sees it as a way to speed up development on certain tasks, particularly prototyping and detecting problems that come up from iteration and changes, without replacing the need for handcrafted content.
4. For some reason, we're still talking about "single player games are dead" discourse, even though Larian made the Best Multiplayer Game of 2023 and single player games are demonstrably, all the time, not dead.
5. At least #4 led to an interesting discussion about how to lead a sustainable game business, including how to manage your "S" growth curve with more innovation. Mostly, Vincke summarizes it as "happy player, happy business", which you might have surmised from his Game Awards speech.
6. Then there's some pretty low-hanging fruit when it comes to interacting with a game's community that's difficult to argue with, like "embrace mods that put your characters in other games".
7. Vincke says the team finds DLC boring to make, so they don't really want to make it anymore.
8. As far as what Larian's actually doing next, with the interviewer Tamoor Hussain keeping it to things that Vincke will actually answer, Vincke is hoping to make a pipeline over the next 5 years where they can get multiple RPGs in development at the same time smoothly. About as close as we'll get to a timeline on their next game is that Vincke says his wife will divorce him if their next game isn't out 5 years from now.

weicht dem Bannhammer aus

China canceled 12,000 metric tons of United States pork shipments amid a high-stakes trade standoff between the superpowers, according to data released Thursday.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250425004653/https://thehill.com/policy/international/5266321-china-cancels-us-pork-ships/

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

GOG has rereleased Capcom RPG Breath of Fire IV, marking this as the game's PC version debut in the US after over two decades.

Followup: https://www.tumblr.com/beemovieerotica/781112056881496064/it-becomes-really-apparent-what-peoples-thought?redirect_to=%2Fbeemovieerotica%2F781112056881496064%2Fit-becomes-really-apparent-what-peoples-thought

More: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/ben-barres-transgender-scientist-shares-story/

I don't care about the kids under 30. The funnier the better, and the older you are the more I want to know: what would you like to be when you grow up?
Achievable goals fall short of true potential.

On Tuesday night, Claire Ponder Selib, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), received an email from the Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice (DOJ) that left her devastated.

The message informed her that a federal grant that supported a pilot program to train victim advocates who staff domestic violence shelters, hotlines and rape crisis centers was being cut. The program, called the Victim Advocacy Corps, began in 2022 and selected 15 students from six colleges and universities that serve minority populations to take part in a year-long, paid fellowship at local organizations, including campus-based sexual assault programs, domestic violence agencies and family justice centers. The DOJ notice claimed the grant “no longer effectuates Department priorities,” which it said were focused on “more directly supporting certain law enforcement operations” and “combatting violent crime.”

The pilot program also aimed to solve turnover among advocates caused by low pay and an uptick in domestic violence that experts attribute to the pandemic and new abortion restrictions. “I would say quite frankly that our workforce is in crisis,” Selib said. “Our goal with this program was to create a pipeline for the new generation of victim advocates.” Selib had hoped the program would eventually expand nationwide.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/mapporn by /u/rayg10 on 2025-04-25 23:14:19+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/mapporn by /u/DTComposer on 2025-04-25 19:41:49+00:00.

The U.S. dollar dropped in value by about a tenth against a basket of currencies in the last few weeks, including against the euro, pound, Swiss franc, and yen.

Like you're ashamed of your own poo baby. Be proud of that loaf bro... You made that with your own body.

#poop #ibslife #ibs @showerthoughts @funny #showerthought

Archive link

Houthi rebels in Yemen have shot down seven US Reaper drones in less than six weeks, a loss of aircraft worth more than US$200 million (NZ$334m) in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military campaign against the Iran-backed militants.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360666149/houthi-rebels-shoot-down-7-us-military-reaper-drones-worth-334m-recent-weeks

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

For consumers such as 24-year-old Lily Zeng, who says sex was rarely discussed at home when she was growing up in northern China – and the topic of masturbation was absolutely taboo – the days of discomfiting modesty are over.

https://archive.ph/7xvPR