Every day now, when the USAians log on, I feel a weird mixture of sad and irritated. They're in a bad way, but they talk about it as if the whole world has gone wrong. It didn't. One very loud country has been falling apart for decades, and it just slid off the edge from "bad" to "horrible", just like Turkey and India and a few other much more idealistic democracies have done.
Everyone else saw this coming. It's not surprising or special. It is awful, and there are good folks in danger now, and there will be IDPs and refugees. But I can't help thinking that the firm conviction among many USAians that it is a special place, politically, a uniquely wonderful project in inclusive democracy - that arrogance in itself is both why so many USAians are so surprised, but also (at least partly) why this ugly Christian nationalism has been so successful.
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@TheNational
Wound up ringing them just to make sure.
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The UK government, regardless of its nominal political party, is determined to shift wealth to oligarchs and destroy the planet.
They say:
"Growth" (economic cancer!) must be unhindered at all costs. You, and your children, and the forests and seas, will all work and die (in prison, if need be) in order to feed the pathetic fantasies of weak politicians who crave the approval of the mighty oligarchs.
https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/01/31/au-royaume-uni-une-criminalisation-sans-precedent-des-militants-pacifistes-en-faveur-du-climat_6524418_3210.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg7zdme95z1t
[#]degrowth
[#]ukpol
[#]greenanarchy
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Medicine for troubled times: I have somehow only just now discovered James White's Sector General books.
Pointedly pacifist #scifi . Great aliens.
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Yet another cold. This winter has been a nonstop parade of pathogens in our noses, ears, throats, and lungs. Two kids in school and one day a week going into the office seems to be just enough to keep it all going. Not with a bang but a snurfle.
snurf
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春節快樂!
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This week I'm training as a Unison shop steward. I'm in a room full of people who are asking questions like "Will I lose my job because I stand up for other workers?" and "How do we make good jobs now and work for a livable planet for our kids?". We're learning employment law and how to run meetings that are safe and energizing and work-shopping each others' challenges.
And then I read about Musk revealing himself, and my kid tells me they're having nightmares about Trump coming to our house to kill us because we sprawl outwith lots of his wee little boxes, and I guess it's going to be like this for a long while, innit.
[#]union
[#]antifa
[#]organize
[#]ecoanarchism
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On why hermit crabs might choose plastic waste for their shelters:
"there has been a widespread decline in mollusc abundance and diversity since the 16th Century due to human exploitation and climate change (18, 19). As a result, in some regions, hermit crabs might have more artificial than natural shells available for housing. So much so that due to the increasing use of artificial materials by these animals and the scarcity of empty natural shells compared to the number of crabs, authorities at Mu Ko Surin National Park in Thailand have organised campaigns to donate natural snail shells. "
From a remarkable article shared by Corey Bradshaw (https://mastodon.world/@conservbytes/113870310374544449).
https://conservationbytes.com/2025/01/22/iecology-identifies-extent-of-synthetic-polymer-habitats/
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This is a lovely paper by Friedman, McHaffie, Noble and Stenning on autistic people's experience of/connection to nature, and why #actuallyAutistic folks challenge the category of "nature" by refusing to privilege or separate human from non-human life.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10779
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The evidence we have for the earliest describable life on earth suggests that
and
The article in Nature is here : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02461-1
and a good discussion is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/19/luca-is-the-progenitor-of-all-life-on-earth-but-its-genesis-has-implications-far-beyond-our-planet
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Carol Cadwalladr is an amazing writer. Here, she writes a beautiful portrait of a remarkable and unlikely friend, Sergei Cristo, which is also an exposé of deep Russian infiltration and subversion of the UK government.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/19/the-westminster-whistleblower-how-my-friend-sergei-tried-to-expose-the-kremlin-plot-against-britain
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Recipe for going home.
Get on the train early. Move seats; the one you settled into was reserved.
Pile up your stuff in such a way that you ought not to forget anything at the other end.
Fall asleep with your mouth open.
Wake up in Perth. In Dundee. You are now thirsty. It is dark. Did you bring water?
Listen to an utter merkin talking very loudly in a North American accent about dressing fashionably for a funeral.
You have a North American accent. Hide it.
It is dark. Put on noise cancelling headphones to hide your accent and watch travel films about West Africa, where it is not dark.
Pack everything up and forget nothing.
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This is appalling, and wholly predictable.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-01-11/southern-california-wildfires-private-firefighters-jump-into-action
That plus this
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/la-wildfires-incarcerated-firefighters
It led me to wonder about the composition of the labour force that dealt with the Great Fire of Rome (from which we get the phrase "fiddling while Rome burns"). Interestingly, private fire crews are not mentioned, though the Vigiles were originally slaves and I am reasonably sure household slaves would have been used. Maybe someone has better sources?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles
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I try very hard not to post about work here.
However, I have been reminded yet again that Microsoft ignores RFC5322 for email addresses, and thus if you have a column of email addresses using addresses of the form
Meloni, Husky husky@tormentnexus.io
in Excel, then paste that into Outlook, you will regret it.
I corresponded with the author of Eudora, back when I was a systems analyst at the University of Chicago. before Eudora got sold to Qualcomm. It was a kindly, reliable programme. Whatever happened to code like that?
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Two good scicomm pieces reframing the environmental polycrisis. TLDR; unimaginably radical change will happen soon, whether politicians and businesses choose it or not.
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/renewables-wont-save-us-from-climate-catastrophe-experts-warn-what-will/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jan/07/climate-change-reform-elisa-morgera
Both pieces look to Indigenous and local community actors, cultures, "ways of living in harmony" for answers. Yes, some Indigenous communities and scholar/activists have bridged the gap between modernity and living in balance - ICCA offers a powerful alternative! - but the label is being commodified...
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After 30 years as an emigre staring back in horror as the USA descends ever further into pathological farce, I see someone has finally discovered subtle political humour.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/trump-says-half-mast-flags-at-his-inauguration-make-americans-unhappy
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I've been learning how to work with my new PineNote from @PINE64 .
It took a bit of doing, but I've got @zotero running; they don't provide an aarch64 build but there is one in the wild for Arch Linux that can be adjusted.
@obsidian works, @logseq doesn't (no aarch64 build).
Blessings upon @Vivaldi who do provide an aarch64 deb file. I will be looking for a good high-contrast greyscale style that suits an epaper display.
Normal things like emacs just work and the screen/stylus/backlight are lovely. The team working on the PineNote have crafted a really good interface - it's not something to give to a non-tecchie, but it's a fine tool.
Now to sort out a keyboard, and then iBus and support for Devanagari, Newa Lipi, Bangla and all that.
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We were talking about Suchir Balaji at dinner tonight, and I took the chance to teach the Smalls about Aaron Swartz. That, in turn, led to questions about balancing cyber security, open access, and Indigenous community rights to their own knowledge. That's my wife's research and praxis (in Nepal and Tibet, but largely in colonial collections and institutions holding Indigenous objects), though we also talked about Jim Enote's work in Zuñi. Then went to look at the work of @carlmalamud (who worked with Aaron).
No staggering conclusions, just a really interesting conversation.
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If you happen to be (or know) a procurement/logistics expert looking for an international humanitarian job in #Scotland... https://www.impactpool.org/jobs/1126676
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One of the greatest benefits that independence for Scotland and Wales would bring is a reawakening of English radicalism.
Here is a wonderful recording by Chumawamba of the Diggers' Song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdu2fNVpUHE&t=208
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