Notices by Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷 (kimsj@mastodon.social), page 4

@cstross Almost every time the beancounters take over, things go wrong. Because they can count everything, they think they know everything. As the old adage says, they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

I’ve just had a new shower installed. I was disgusted to learn it has bluetooth. So now I have a shower that
A) might have software bugs,
B) could be hacked from outside, pouring hot water for days on end if I’m away, and
C) could be messed with by anyone with the app while someone else is in the shower (whether accidentally or deliberately).

The builders were rather disappointed by my reaction. I just hate totally unnecessary enshittification. What’s wrong with a purely mechanical solution? 😡.

@amiserabilist If #CrowdStrike had been hacked, the consequences could have been a thousand times worse. And now Russia knows that. 😱

If you know anyone who is planning on not voting because ‘it won’t make a difference’, explain to them how public funds are allocated to opposition parties (so-called Short money). £42.82 for every 200 votes gained by the party. More than 20p per vote. Per year. Every vote counts!

Edit: Don’t just favourite this, boost it. People need to know!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Money

A message for Americans who are comfortable that a Trump win is unthinkable. That’s what Remainers thought about Brexit, and complacency led to all the unthinkable things happening.
Fight like hell for Biden, while you still have the opportunity.

@tomcom Truly the end of an era. My company used both a Z80 and a 6502 in the same design when they were the leading edge of microprocessor technology…
Here’s an article on it, though it wrongly suggests it had two Z80s, not one plus a 6502.
https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/8bit_Upgrades/SJR_HDFS.html

So, it seems the US military was secretly responsible for promoting anti-vax propaganda during the early Covid pandemic. I wonder if Trump himself signed off on this?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

H/t @annmlipton

@ChrisMayLA6 This is all about patience. The Right realised decades ago that the Overton Window can only be moved slowly; they have spent 50 years dragging it slowly right. The Left is always impatient, and naively imagines that somehow every election will magically result in a giant leap to a socialist utopia. Starmer is regarded not as the first step in a long grinding journey leftwards, but as ‘Tory lite’, a betrayal of everything. A few like Mick Lynch understand this, but he is unusual.

@junesim63 @ChrisMayLA6 You see, impatience! Corbyn’s policies were outside the Overton Window. He wasn’t the ‘first step’, he was a wild leap into the unknown (at least that’s how the electorate saw it).
We may not like what Starmer is offering, but at least it’s to the left of the Tories, and will start to move the Overton Window leftwards again.

I have long been of the opinion that economists’ estimations of ‘acceptable’ global warming were dangerously naive. This article by Ann Pettifor provides damning evidence of just how naive these calculations have been, and still are, sadly…
Essential reading for anyone still complacent about the climate emergency!

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/08/22/neoclassical-economists-are-the-last-people-to-listen-to-on-climate-change/

(Edited to fix the link)
#Climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency

@TCMuffin Maybe if the ‘educated’ took better care of the ‘uneducated’ there would be less of a divide. 😜

@hengymrohebwlad A dream solution for 2024:
1. Make ‘deliberately or recklessly misleading the public’ a serious crime. If voters are not told the truth, their votes mean nothing, and democracy dies.
2. Use German/NZ-style PR voting system (additional member system).
3. Introduce UBI
4. Fully tax unearned income.
5. Add new higher tax band
6. Divide England into regions of size comparable with Scotland and Wales, each with a devolved parliament. Leave Westminster as the Federal Government.
HNY 👍

@br00t4c “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana
In this case, that’s probably what the defunders are hoping will happen.

@goatsarah @christineburns I suspect she’s just so lacking in empathy that she thought she was doing a good job. Her main focus seems to have been on NHS admin, completely failing to appreciate what it must be like for folk trapped in a hostile system with a clock ticking.

@goatsarah If this is really a reflection of the views she holds, the report could have benefited from including such points in its summary! Having skip-read the summary, I’m left with the impression that her position is ‘nobody knows’ so more research is needed (which is a very valid point), but what she fails to adequately address is what strategy should be adopted in the mean time, which is surely the most urgent and vital question. I’m not sure this interview throws much more light on that.

@mrblissett @anildash And you trust Threads to be secure, Anil?

Clearly, the Whitehouse should host its own server

@anildash I don’t want to interact with threads. I don’t do Zuckerberg. So I see this as a failure of the Whitehouse: they should be running their own instance in ‘proper’ Mastodon, not weaseling ing via a commercial back door.

@DrALJONES I have suspected all along that criticism of UNRWA by Israel is just another ploy to make life more shit for Palestinians.

@MarleyandMe @paul The trouble is, these days it’s almost impossible not to use Amazon, they have such a monopoly. It’s time the empire was forcibly broken up.

Not only are we in late-stage capitalism, we seem to be in late-stage politics too.
Politicians have completely forgotten that they are elected to make good decisions, and are instead obsessed only with getting re-elected.
I have no idea how to fix this. 😢