Toots for simon_brooke@mastodon.scot account

Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-02-01 at 20:20

@liberaforms

I'm getting liberaforms running on Debian Bookworm under Apache 2.4. I have followed your guide at

https://docs.liberaforms.org/sysadmin/install/

• except that* I am using www-data as the user ID rather than liberaforms.

Your guide says that you'd appreciate updated Apache configuration details; once I'm satisfied, how do I contribute these back?

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-02-01 at 13:00

"The participants identified a negative feedback loop, whereby the government’s failure to tax wealth effectively means it lacks sufficient revenue to uphold the social contract by which strong public services, an effective social safety net and a healthy economy provide people with decent living standards."

[#]poverty

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/wealth-inequality-risks-triggering-societal-collapse-within-next-decade-report-finds

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-31 at 23:25

"In Mogadishu, Somalia, the State Department instructed security guards who were protecting an arms depot from insurgents to simply walk off the site" – @ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-state-department-usaid-humanitarian-aid-freeze-ukraine-gaza-sudan

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-31 at 21:36

'Another Labour MP said: “Not many in the party are going to man the barricades over Heathrow, but Rosebank is a very different matter altogether. There would be massive resistance if they try and give consent for that.”'

This is irrational. The third runway is every bit as damaging as approving Rosebank.

[#]ClimateEmergency

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/31/keir-starmer-warned-against-approving-rosebank-oilfield-labour-unease-heathrow

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-31 at 13:50

Hauling a five metre log – the longest we can saw – onto the sawmill bed.

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-31 at 12:01

This morning's work: towing more logs into what I used to call "my garden", for sawing.

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-31 at 08:33

This is why I find it so hard to get up in the morning.

[#]CatsOfMastondon

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-30 at 13:19

Not a bad morning. Six new house pillars cut, and the hungry hoard fed.

[#]Crofting

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-30 at 09:26

[#]PhantastikPrompts 30.01. Question to writers: Which of your books would you not want to live in, and why?

A lot of what I write is set in modern Scotland, where I do live; and while it's mostly about what's wrong with modern Scotland, I do believe we can make it better.

My fantasy work is set in a worse world, of tyranny, slavery, misogyny: but the stories are about people trying (and mostly succeeding) to make it better. So if I could live with my protagonists, that wouldn't be bad, either.

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-30 at 09:11

This interview with @pluralistic on #enshittification is well worth a listen, and his (apparently unbiased) plug for @frameworkcomputer at the end is persuasive.

Volts: Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech?

Episode webpage: https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-we-avoid-the-enshittification

Media file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/151199735/ac96f179607eac8bf720ff8d1c346dec.mp3

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 17:25

I have finally deleted both my Facebook and my Twitter accounts today. I haven't used either in years, but I hadn't got round to deleting. Now I have.

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 16:45

[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 29: How do your format your drafts? Is it the same as the final manuscript?

It's evolved over years. 40 years ago I used nroff; these days I write in Markdown, and pipe through pandoc, xsltproc, and then through prince for pdf or back to pandoc for epub.

Using a WYSIWYG wordprocessor is a really bad mistake, in my opinion; it's too easy to get caught worrying about format and pagination too early. Get the text right first!

[#]AmWriting

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 15:34

(If ye've not seen Danny on the Cuillin Ridge, watch Danny on the Cuillin Ridge. It's the most epic bike ride you will ever see.)

[#]BikeTooter

https://youtu.be/70NBZV6z_o0?si=tH8nyjRYiwibCvQM

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 15:32

Oor Danny has been up to some wee shenanigans in Germany. This isn't anything like up to the standard of his Cuillin Ridge film, or his Daycare one; but it's still pretty cool.

[#]BikeTooter

https://youtu.be/70NBZV6z_o0?si=tH8nyjRYiwibCvQM

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 14:34

"Protest is part of how democracy works" -- @CarolineLucas

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/29/five-years-nonviolent-protest-wrong-keir-starmer

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 13:40

"Lesley doesn't need me to teach her lessons about the potato famine. She knows as well as I do that the problem was not lack of food. She know as well as I do that in each successive year of the famine, Ireland exported record amounts of wheat...

What has this to do with aviation fuel?

A litre of aviation fuel is 8,250 calories

[#]ClimateEmergency

[#]Ecocide

[#]Aviation

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2025-01-29-the-potato-famine-and-aviation-fuel/

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 13:34

"So yes, you can divert agricultural production — good food — to Grangemouth to be made into fuel for aeroplanes. That is chemically, industrially, and possibly, to a limited extent, economically possible.

But to fly the aircraft we fly now, would require us to divert one half of the world's entire agricultural production to aviation fuel. Which is to say, if we're prepared to sacrifice the entire population of both India and China, we can continue to fly"

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2025-01-29-the-potato-famine-and-aviation-fuel/

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-29 at 11:34

The amount of aviation fuel consumed in a year is more than three times the calorific value of the total amount of food eaten by all humans anywhere.

This is a step towards an argument about why we can't have 'green' aviation.

Please feel free to check my numbers, blog post later today.

EDIT: I'm wrong, it's about half the amount of food eaten by humans.

[#]ClimateEmergency

[#]BioFuels

[#]Aviation

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q4bmlRC3NeIG9-t35avfEp7YI8YeBQLHtzHxL5mts38/edit?usp=sharing

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-28 at 15:01

Massive flock of starlings in the trees above my house just now!

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Written by Simon Brooke on 2025-01-28 at 13:54

"Unless we achieve 'net zero' carbon emissions well before 2050, then the chances of sustaining a habitable planet are exactly that: zero. But 'net zero,' as we've already seen, is a scam: all the schemes which have so far been set up to sell carbon credits have by now been shown to be either absurdly over-optimistic, or actual deliberate fraud...

So 'net zero' has to mean actual zero."

[#]ClimateEmergency

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2025-01-27-when-does-the-charge-start/

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