Address by the Deputy Parliamentary Chair of the Virtual Space Nation of Asgardia

 Sticking with politics, it's been a while since we checked in on the folks at Lembit Opik's zero gravity baby farm. The following is taken from the "Weekly Q and A with the Chairman of Asgardian Parliament" held on the eighth day of the month of Leo in the Asgardian year 0010 (full video posted below) with thanks to YouTube's transcription function...

 

12:31 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:  

     Yes, I believe we are live. Um and while we wait on the Chair, Peter, would you like to give a summary of our um chair's meeting from an hour ago?

 

12:42 - Deputy Chair Peter Maughan (pictured):   

     Yes, Sarah. [clears throat] We're looking forward very much in the the meeting of the chairs [clears throat] looking forward to further discussions of our trip aa of the uh Antarctic potential. We also are looking forward to whatever we're going to be able to do to celebrate the uh anniversary of Asgardia and uh we had a lot of chairs there at the meeting tonight. So it was very very good. Um we're waiting for some reports back from Lembit (Opik, Chairman of Asgardian Parliament) with regard to the uh discussions he's been having with Head of Nation and with uh the Prime Minister. So we're hoping we might get some more news from him him at uh at this meeting. But as it stands at the moment, we're really sort of waiting, absorbing, looking forward to what we can do, and hoping that I can find a cure for the hiccups that I keep getting every two minutes, um, courtesy of the new drug that I'm taking and it gives me uh it gives me hiccups. So, don't let anybody tell you that it's easy to lose weight with these injections that you have because it is. But unfortunately, it also gives you ter terrible indigestion which I have. 

 But no, we had a we had a very good meeting and we're now looking forward to what Lembit will bring back to us. Lembit's in a in a conference in London at the moment (GB News' and Jordan Peterson's ARC). So, he's having to work around that. But, uh, we're hoping that he'll have some good news for us [clears throat] in a few minutes when he manages to come to us. So, that's pretty much all we did. We didn't come to any huge conclusions about anything, but we did uh we did have a good meeting and uh and that, and now we're waiting for Lembit. 

15:12 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:

        Thank you, Peter. 

 

15:13 - Deputy Chair: 

       But now, now we're live. I should say that uh that my name is Peter Maughan and I'm de deputy chair of the parliament of Asgardia which is the first space parliament and also the first fully digital democracy and that if anybody's watching this who is not a resident of Asgardia this is a good time to join. It's €100 or the equivalent in your currency per year and that gives you access to all of the facilities of Asgardia. So if you're not [clears throat] already a member, get joined. Uh we love it. We come together once every week as chairman of the committees of Asgardian Parliament, but we also we also enjoy ourselves. We're all friends. It's all quite nice. Those of us who've been involved in politics for a long time, as I have, know that politics is a dirty, filthy business. But this is not politics. This is politics with a small P in the sense that we are looking to guide the the destiny of mankind in space and looking to safeguard the residents of Asgardia, but not to fight with one another. It's very easy to fall out with me. I mean, I'm in lo local politics in the northeast of England and everybody falls out with me. Although I try to avoid that, but we're just all friends. If I'm in trouble with regard to anything, I can reach out to all of my colleagues in the Parliament of Asgardia and they're always here to lend a helping hand. So, it's worth it to join to have that constant on constant friendship just at the end of a phone and it's lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, I don't know who's here. You can't ask Lem any questions because he's not. But if anybody wants to ask any questions of any anyone, I'll try.

 

17:48 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:

     Peter, you are you're muted, Peter. And I think Lembit has joined us...

 

I'm glad they've kept the intro, but why change perfection?

"Tread More Lightly On Your Lives"

 That was back in November of 2022. Actually it's 'irreplaceable' isn't it? 

 And apologies, this will be a quite long, largely unillustrated, and not very happy post madly stuffed with microlinks, but if you click on only one of those links this last day of Pride, please let it be THIS. Thank you. I always liked you. 

 Okay. Probably the biggest, if not the only, historical development I've derived any genuine joy and hope from this century is the shedding of my own trans-skepticism as friend after friend of mine found the answer to who they were and came out as trans and non-binary. In the growing light of their revelation the world seemed to me, in this one sense at least, to become better, and richer, and more user-friendly and less exploitative. Then the party I voted into office turned that light out because they thought it's the Government who should decide what human beings are and not human beings. I've heard no one this year wish each other a Happy Pride. So no, I can't say I've grown any fonder of Sir Keir Starmer since I posted the picture above. 

 But now Labour is finally finding a replacement, and perhaps the knots in my brain will loosen. However, as the man himself said: 

"while this is an important moment it is not one for celebration. It is one for reflection. On how a party that has always prided itself on its anti-racism, its commitment to equality, its belief in a better, fairer Britain could have fallen so far as to betray its own principles, as well as the principles of the country. This is also a moment to apologise once again. To all those who were hurt, to all those who were let down, to all those driven out of our party, who no longer felt it was their home, who suffered the most appalling abuse. Today, on behalf of the entire Labour Party, I say: sorry."

 Now obviously that wasn't Starmer's resignation speech. That was the speech he gave in February 2023 after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said they would no longer be monitoring the Labour Party for anti-semitism – the speech from which the quote "If you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave" has so often been taken out of context, that context being it was an untreated stream of white crud. Because, two years later, this same Equalities and Human Rights Commission's devastatingly under-researched guidance on who should be allowed into what toilet prompted some of these trans friends to seek out, in the words of one, "a plan and a passport" as the UK plummeted to 44th place out of 49 European countries in its recognition of trans people’s gender identity. In plain sight and to the accompaniment of countless unmarginalised commentators who genuinely don't seem to know what the word "trans" even means, the British Government became more vocally hostile to the gender non-conforming than I can remember in my lifetime, contributing oceans of piss to a rising tide of trillionaire-sponsored abject cruelty with the openly transphobic trustee of Sex Matters becoming the Prime Minister's director of communications (before resigning over Mandelson)...

 

Oh yes, Mandelson

 

... and, at the very opening of this Pride Month, Wes Streeting's replacement as Health Secretary going on the Today programme to pronounce that a trans woman is a man in a dress, an interview I have literally woken up thinking about most days since. (His exact words were in fact "I wouldn't say trans women are women", but what are they then, fucking UFOs?) 

 

 

Sorry, wrong picture

 And obviously – actually I'll take that "obviously" back, because so many seem to miss it – Starmer-mandated cruelty wasn't just reserved for the trans. Look at Woolwich Crown Court: With plans still in place to speed up "access to justice" by ending a person's right to trial by jury, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson recently set a couple of unorthodox precedents, firstly by intitiating a prosecution for contempt of court against defense lawyer (and veteran of inquiries into Grenfell, Hillsborough, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence) Rajiv Menon for daring to remind a jury that they were allowed to vote with their conscience, and secondly, by sentencing the four Palestine Action activists left to defend themselves to a total of twenty-five years in prison for a crime they'd neither been charged with, tried for, nor found guilty of. What all four had been charged with was "criminal damage", specifically: taking a sledgehammer to Elbit Sytems UK "products" intended to be tested on Palestinians before being marketed globally as "battle-proven". (Who knows what "products"? Helmets probably.) What they were jailed for however was terrorism, with the backing of a Court of Appeal who had, in deference to the Government, reversed the High Court's overturning of Palestine Action's proscription.

 But that's a tangent really, as is Starmer's appointment of the guy who used to run the UK's most notorious monopsony as a new monopolies regulator, as is the constant downplaying of Russian interference even when it's arson attacks against Starmer's own property, as is anything Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood does, or anything I was ever planning to write about Morgan McSweeney, the not nearly famous enough Liberal-hating, Socialist-hating, Gary-Lineker-hating former Chief of Staff who put Starmer into power with undisclosed donations to Labour Together and a campaign of surveillance against journalists. I'm just getting all these brain-shredding grievances down here now because I don't ever want to write about Keir Starmer again.

 But no, they're all tangents, because the only thing compelling me to write any of this at all was there was meant to be a mass lobby of MPs to reject the EHRC's "bathroom ban" last Friday, but it had to be cancelled because of the heat and so I was hoping we could all write to our MP instead (particularly if any of you live in Makerfield) and here's that link again please. I also hope whoever takes over as Prime Minister has a plan for the heat, and the hatred, and the battle-proving, and I hope it's more than just letting it play itself out or whatever.

 Finally, since I hope never to write about Starmer again, I'll use this post to share his very last interview before resigning, given at the G7 summit. Chris Spargo is a fairly new YouTuber to the scene, whose other videos include "Why is this bin everywhere in the UK?", "Do you really need to preheat the oven?", and "I just want to show you some weird stones". I love Chris Spargo. And Callum, Emma, Sib, Griffyn, Harry, Amanda, Ashley, Billie, Sarah, Alastair, Maya, Pippa, Jack, Jas, Jordan, Jay, Es, Ozzy, Miranda, Mamoru, Oli, I love you too. Happy Pride x

 

Exciting Resignation Blog Placeholder: Topless Politics Revisited

I'm afraid you will have to read the link in full to understand this. I should get photoshop again.

 

 Okay. Good. 

 The hopeless, teeth-grinding paralysis logged in my last post has lifted a little today. 

 And with genuine love and respect for all who, by contrast, find themselves disquieted by Keir Starmer's resignation, I do intend to pay my proper goodbyes to that feeble, purge-sanctioning pepperpot soon. But for now I just want to share this Unattended Article from nineteen years ago! I'd thought it prudent to start backing up the blog because who knows what's going to happen to the internet now it's literally being run by Nazis – sorry, "hard power" enthusiasts – and in doing so... well firstly, bloody hell if I say so myself, but this was a great read in its early days before I started just sharing stuff... and secondly, and more pertinently, having grown to believe my anxieties about the normalisation of the Far Right had only begun in 2008, with the shamelessly guff-spraying double whammy of Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for Vice President and an openly Islamophobic Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, I was genuinely taken aback to find in August 2007, when this blog had just begun and Gordon Brown just become Prime Minister: 

I've noticed a number of angry twenty-year-olds at work, angry and hopeless, robbed of any ideology. And it occurred to me of course, any fellow thirty-somethings, that these people have lived HALF THEIR LIVES under the present government… so no wonder they're so scared and racist. It was alright for us because we knew the Tories were baddies when they talked about "Preserving the British Way of Life"… We grew up with images of gorgons smeared in blood and cash and war… But "kids today", they've heard that same poppycock from the good guys. Thatcher's not the baddie anymore, it's something called the New World Order, and expect to hear immigration mentioned a lot...

Fred Spencer and the Great Work

 

 

 I never mentioned Hockney on here before yesterday, but I've mentioned Fred Spencer, with good reason. He used the internet as I feel it should be used, broadcasting hope, sharing his sadnesses, and living without embarassment. I'm glad he got back together with Sharon, as evinced in the video above, even if she's not interested in taking trips, and he definitely is. Of course he is. He's a pioneer. One of the first wave of YouTube celebrities.

  Long after the video that made them both famous, Fred kept proving content creation wasn't just a job for him, but a calling. For over a decade he used this new platform to make whatever he wanted, whether it was Music Videos...

 

 Satire...

 

 

 Or whatever this is...

 

 

 

 And the initial attraction of his output for me, obviously, was that so much of it was bafflingly bad. Or baffling and bad. Or bad and baffling and charming. And raw. Laziness was no impediment to his creativity, clearly. Fred would just throw the doors open and wait for poetry to happen – or to risk happening but then get derailed by him thinking about sex, then stopping thinking about sex but then thinking about volcanoes, as in the video below, which generates an emotion I have no name for.

 

 

 Once relegated to life aboard the mobile home "Starship Betty" however,  after his initial split from Sharon, he started to document a real life and, as I've written here before, I became genuinely engaged by and grateful for the candour of those unsponsored video diaires. I was sad to hear when things with Sheryl Ann hadn't worked out...

 

 

 And when I shared my condolences in the comments, Fred was generous enough to reply. Then, a decade later, once things seemed happily patched up with Sharon, my comment received a second reply...

 

 

 And that's how I learnt Fred Spencer had pasta way. 

 I couldn't find any confirmation of his death online, but that only made me realise how small a digital footprint he left outside of his own channel. 

 I've put off writing this for over a year – possibly because I've had, you know, as I'm sure a lot of us have, actual people I deeply love pass on in that year – but I knew I wanted some part of the internet to commemorate the passing of this particular Fred Spencer. And so here it is. He always kept things personal, and kind, and weird, and I hope his work stays up forever, because I honestly think it epitomises a kind of Internet before the fall, a pole star of the lived experience shared fearlessly, and a paradise we can return to whenever we like. In spite of all the algorithms trying to turn us into Hamlet, this invention is still ours, to do with whatever we like, for as long as we can pay attention to each other. Thank you. Where you've gone, I don't know, hope it's warm and sunny. Here's David Lynch.

 

As a Trusted News Source...

"WORK FOR A KING NOT A CLOWN"

 

 Iranian artist Soheila Sohjkanvari's "Leave to Remain" features a number of old passports stamped with incongruous advertising slogans. The one above is from Burger King (which now I think about it, I should have been able to guess). I saw it today at Tate Britain while catching up with my friend Viv with whom I enjoyed rooms one through eight. I was a little late meeting her though, because I'd stopped to take some video...

 

 

 

 Halfway through Hyde Park I'd heard cheers and car horns to the south, and realised something potentially cheerful might be up outside The Iranian Embassy, so I made a small detour and arrived just in time to see someone climb out onto the balcony (I'm pretty sure it was out, not up, is that possible? UPDATE: No) take down the flag of the Iranian Republic, and fly in its place the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun. (At this point my camerawork gets a bit shaky because I had to take my gloves off to zoom in.)

 

 The police sirens were clearly for somewhere else, and I guess the van driving up and down was showing Fox Newson its flank, but cropped, so your only clue is Sean Hannity – does Hannity still work at Fox? Of course, a lot of rotten kings and clowns with no history of supporting #women, #life or #freedom will want to take responsibility for this if it ends happily, but let's not let them. Picking up speed as I headed on to Pimlico, I sent what I'd shot to a friend at BBC Persian whom I hadn't seen since 2022, with love and hope that her family in Iran was safe. But how would she know? And walking home I learnt a little of it had been published online, which is how I can identify the flags.

 Azadi.

 

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Laser Birds

 

 I've been giving a lot of thought to why the Arrested Development joke above, where Michael finds a bag in the fridge marked 'DEAD DOVE Do Not Eat!' opens it, looks inside, winces, but then says "I don't know what I expected" is so funny (outside of how well it's played and shot), and I think I've got it: People have an unhelpful amount of difficulty processing unexpected information through any medium other than personal experience.

 

  I've also been considering how much I may have overestimated people's desire to communicate with each other in general – or rather, be communicated to – and underestimated how much they might just rather be left to their own opinions, unruffled by information from other people, aliens, or pets. Here are some photographs of a man trying to teach a horse to count: Wilhelm Van Osten, whose work in the 1890's on or with "Clever Hans" spanned a number of moustaches...

 Their story graces the Extra Material of Helen Zaltzman's ever excellent "The Allusionist" podcast, specifically the second of two episodes about science fiction author Mary Robinette Kowal's apparently successful attempts to establish more nuanced communication with her cat, Elsie, through an increasingly large number of "button boards" (as shown below). While aware that no experiment ever showed an animal to be dumber than we thought, I initially approached these episodes with scepticism, but by the time I was hearing about a cat forming compound words – attempting to summon a light's reflection on the ceiling by tapping the buttons for "laser" and "bird", say –  I was asking myself, My God, why doesn't every pet owner have one of these?

 

 Source.

 

And it was this question which led me to consider that, maybe, people would just rather not know what other beings are thinking. Does any of this have anything to do with "Jonah Non Grata"? Not really, which is why I'm posting it. You guys deserve a break. For the record though, I feel that that night at Soho turned out to be both beautiful and useful, give hot thanks to everyone who came – including those who had to because they worked there – and am very grateful too to Rich Cline, for his lovely review which you can read HERE, but that's not much of a post, is it.  

 

Poster suggestion subsequently vetoed by PR. "Faces sell more." 

 

I will also just say that in, you know... these times...  while I may be writing to my MP quite a bit, and while I wish every friend of mine engaging with the Equality and Human Rights Commission's oppressive, ignorant, and unnecessary instructions on gender conformity every success in their consultation with MPs and hope to my core their consultation helps... that, as Rich writes in his review: "absurdity keeps us on our toes," and that we should, more generally, remember Michael and the dead dove and stop putting so much faith in the idea that, as long as we make sense, we'll be understood. I wish that were true. But, less dispiritingly, I'm also excited to start reaching out again to people through a work they won't have to understand.

 Here are tickets for Jonah at Edinburgh.

 And here are those episodes:

Unposted on Election Night: Spoilers for Vengeance

 Okay, a little more about what's happening in US... 

 B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*

 I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...

 

 "What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked."

 Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:

"the reality is that Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice." 

 Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:

"I never understood that... No regrets... In my life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between, regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."

 

"So Six Flags, the theme park..."

 

"Exactly."

 

* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.

Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 32: Where Pounds Won't Go!

"Pound as in the pounding of these zammoths' feet?"

"What zammoths? The ones to our right?"

"The ones I'm pointing at. Well, yeah, those ones, okay. God. So I wasn't exactly pointing at them. But yeah. God."

"No. Pounds as in insert-national-currency-here. The future has no regulated currency."

"Oh, and air?"

"No. And no zammoths. They're hallucinations. This planet's atmosphere is too thin. We're dying of radiation sickness."

"Speak for yourself. My body's packing in because it doesn't know how to function on a planet that has only a third of Earth's gravity. Hey, where are those guys going?" 

"I can't see what you're pointing at."

"Forget it... Where are we again?"

"Fucking everywhere, apparently."

 

 Illustration by nobody.

Election Rabbit Hole

 As America marks Bonfire Night just as we marked Independence Day, let's let it happen and just crawl down a hole, because it's all okay, look into the screen, closer, I found the hole. Come on. Let's go. Just for now. Into the screen...

 

 Once you're out, don't look up how old Kane Pixels is (no relation) or how he shot this. But do look up parts three and one, especially if you're into horror and into general and zillenial definitions of the liminal (thresholds and corridors) because both The Oldest View and its creator are doing something quite firsty. In fact, look up how it was shot as well, and maybe also look at this video about Utopian Botanist Julien Bercheron and the Vally View Mall, Texas, which mysteriously appeared once in my recommendations, and led me to this hole.

Staying In My Lane

 Those old explanations of ghosts – echoes of a trauma baked into place – is it only human trauma that has that power? Might parks be crawling with the ghosts of worms? Is this river haunted by fish, fish ghosts targeted by heron, more than a millenia-worth? I'm trying to get into the Hallowe'en spirit now that the weather is proper October.

 

 Unfinished business – that was another explanation. Do only humans get to have that then? Wait, is that all a soul is? Business? Is it? I haven't been busy this year. Maybe. Have I felt like a ghost? A bit. And it hasn't all been unenjoyable, but I watched a youtube essay last week about the films of the Beatles which reminded me that being A CREATIVE FORCE is, you know, an option, and initially may require nothing more than just thinking to yourself "I'm going to be A CREATIVE FORCE" and then seeing what happens, and it's really picked me up. (Here's that video essay.) 

 

 In this case a bit of what happened appears to be me going for a walk and then posting shit phone pictures of it here. Well, good. You'll have to take my word for it that there were joggers. It's odd to me, by the way, that that that's what it's called: "jogging". That's definitely what it looks like, but it's not the aspect you'd think they'd want to advertise. Jogging's normally something you want to avoid, in case you scratch the record or spill your drink. How can I make running forward feel more like running into something? Jog!

 

 Are these pavement demarcations a hangover from the pandemic, or permanent now? And has anyone studied their effect on a pedestrian's mental health? I think I hate them. They just seem like another thing to get on the wrong side of. It's nice to have somewhere to record that though. It's nice to be A CREATIVE FORCE. The next paragraph contains swearing.

 

 I also hate seeing so many people right now take the side of a side, rather than siding with people – to see so many call for an end to Netanyahu's response to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holoocaust while not also calling - seeing as we're calling for things - for the safe return of Israeli hostages, as though we've finally run out of internet and there was just was no room for the Landaus. Well fuck that and fuck the war and fuck taking sides unless that side is Peace. Fuck Bibi. And fuck Hamas; buoyed by their actions, the Iranian Government announced last week it would be targeting Persian journalists working in Britain like my friend Faren. And, parenthetically (do go on, Simon) coming up to a year after the murder of Mahsa Ahmini by Iranian police for having loose hair I decided to search Xitter for any more news of protests, and found myself enaged in the following fun coversation about... let me check... yes, apartheid. Stick with it.

 

 

 

 I know, "mroe"...

 By the way, you can now find me on blue sky at @slepkane.bsky.social. 

 I really hope you're all okay.

Guess who won the election for Asgardia's New Head of Space Nation!

  No, not Lembit Öpik. He's just here to introduce the real winner – and, for all I know, only candidate – Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli. Dr. Igor keeps his victory address short and informative, and since I haven't been keeping up with the Asgardian Parliament, I was grateful to be brought up to date...

 While Ashurbeyli admits the "so-called panemic" has stalled Asgardia's financial development somewhat, I was excited to learn that the Space Nation now has its own currency – the "Solar" – and that the exchange of fiat currencies into Solars has been "enabled", even if "the third part of the cycle" – namely the exchange of Solars back into actual money – "has yet to be addressed." A project for the next five years then.

 The launch of a new sattelite called "Asgardia 2" is also on the agenda it seems, although what it will do, how it will do it, and how it will be launched is yet to be determined. 

 Ashurbeyli is keen too, he says, to create a new language for Asgardia, and website. 

 

An imagining, I'm guessing.

 

 But "the constitutional anchoring of Asgardia's primary mission" remains "the birth of the first human child in Space." The Head of Nation still seems really keen on this, and "on our path to achieving the goal," Ahsurbeyli announces, "we have come close to the first stage – an isolation experiment on the ground, simulating a year-long space flight involving several married couples of volunteers to conceive and give birth in conditions as close to those in orbit as possible. However," Ashurbeyli admits, "the cost of such an experiment is very high and funding has to be secured." Close then, but no cigar. Also I'm pretty sure the closest conditions to being in orbit achievable "on the ground" are forty second burts of zero gravity in a plummeting fuselage, so encouraging couples to volunteer for a whole year of that might really eat into the budget. Still, at least someone voted for him.

 I've dropped you into this video just as the Head of Parliament Lembit Öpik – himself introduced by Asgardia's "Head of Administration" and one-hundred-and-third human in space – appears to be pretending to know sign language. Oh Lembit.

 

 

"I hug all of you and every one of you."

Sure, I'm still on twitter.

 When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:

 

 Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division. 

 Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.

 

 

 And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.  

 

 My sister's a meme!

 

 But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that. 

 Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.

 Anyway, here's some chat.
 

 And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise. 

 

 

* Here's how this post originally began: 

 

 When I first started

 Okay actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this, about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up... tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."

 Okay.

 When I first started returning to this blog to post daily

 Oh bloody hell....

 "First started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no, back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again. Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.

 When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.