My bad - a mis-step in the culture wars minefield

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Sorry. In a recent frenzy of tidying I accidentally deleted everything but this update (the 08.06 one). I imagine it's squirreled away in a trash bin somewhere, but until I find it ...
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No, it's gone without trace. Here are the highlights: I've better things to do than try to reproduce the deathless prose. 

I noticed some time after the fact that Elon's fearless scythe had cut off an account I had on the app formerly known as Twitter:

This was accompanied by a screed that explained steps I could take to appeal/reverse/otherwise fix the ruling. As my last tweet was dated back in March (I haven't  been inclined to spend much time on Twitter since  Mr Musk started his race to the bottom), I didn't think it worth my while to go through all this,. but here's the gist:

I suspect, though, that my unwitting transgression was my use of 'cotton-pickin'' in a tweet about Nadine Dorries. Look hard enough and there's racism at the root of this term. But I used it in a paraphrase of something Deputy Dawg used to say before jumping to a wrong-headed or obvious conclusion; his southern drawl should have warned me that I might be treading on some toes..

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Update: 2023.08.06.07:10  – Added PS

PS:

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As Li'l Miss Barnacle's Long Goodbye ticked into its seventh eighth week, this tweet appeared:

 

 

Having said she was standing down "with immediate effect" seven eight weeks ago, she cannot now stand down until Parliament is back in session (after the party conferences, or – perhaps more significantly – after the publication date of her book). So her constituents ("marvellous", according to her June tweet) will remain unrepresented until then. I imagine the local booksellers will have  got their pre-orders in.

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PPS And the last bit of the repair:

<REPAIR Update="2023.08.08.12:55">      

Victoria Boliviana in the wild

As a passing thought I mentioned a TV programme I had seen about the discovery and naming of a new giant waterlily:

For a (stupid) moment I thought "Aha, so that's what Victoria means, but as any fule kno Victoria was the goddess of victory, and there's nothing particularly victorious about a waterlily. No, the reason for the name was just that a Victorian collector wanted to curry favour with his monarch, just as William Herschel had done with her grandfather;

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Herschel, a devoted subject of England’s King George III, suggested that the new planet be named Georgium Sidus, or George’s Star. This went against the naming convention that had developed in the Western world, in which planets were named after Roman deities. It was also less appealing to astronomers outside Great Britain for obvious reasons. Several alternative names were tossed around, including Herschel (after its discoverer) and Neptune. German astronomer Johann Elert Bode, whose observations helped establish the new object as a planet, suggested another possibility: Uranus.

Bode’s suggestion became the most popular, and chemist Martin Klaproth even named his newly discovered element “uranium” in a show of support. Although astronomers in England continued to use Georgium Sidus until around 1850, they eventually joined the rest of the world in calling the seventh planet Uranus.
Source

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Update: 2023.08.31.09:05  – Added PPPS  

When I wrote about the timing of Li'l Miss Barnacle's exit my suggestion of the coincidence of her publication date was not entirely serious. But in a recent The Rest Is Politics Rory Stewart is convinced that the timing is no accident. He says something measured (or do I mean mealy-mouthed?) like 'she should be very careful'. But he is obviously quite aghast at her atrocious behaviour.

Perhaps, though, he is being diplomatic rather than mealy-mouthed. I wonder if there's a risk of prosecution for Contempt:

Contempt of privilege is a term used to describe any act - or failure to act - that may prevent or hinder the work of either House of Parliament. A more specific offence against parliamentary privilege is known as a breach of privilege.

source

Maybe not. Litigation in politics is a rather hackneyed weapon in the culture wars...

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(and has given the word weaponize a new lease of metaphorical life): this is from Ngrams:

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... but involving electoral realities in a tawdry publicity stunt is hardly a mark of good faith. She obviously has contempt both for Parliament (in particular for the PM – who only got to read her letter of resignation via the Daily Mail...

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(For some reason I'm reminded of Alan [not then  Lord] Sugar and Jürgen Klinsman's shirt: 'I wouldn't  wash my car with it'. No idea where that memory came from.)
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... and for her constituents. Come to think of it, her contempt extends to the public in general. But maybe actual contempt doesn't come into the legal defition. 

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