Notices by Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷 (kimsj@mastodon.social), page 5

@justafrog @mikeolson @floatybirb @sundogplanets I’m starting to think that commercial interests are going to go on ignoring the risks until they trigger the Kessler syndrome. Nobody seems capable of stopping them. Maybe that’s the way it has to be… wait a decade or two for the debris to decay then start again more sensibly.
Never mind, the CEOs will have had their bonuses by the time it all goes pear-shaped.

@carnage4life It’s worse than ‘buy a lot of lottery tickets’… it’s ‘I put all my money on 13 at roulette and it came up, so you should too’.
There are plenty of things you can do wrong after your number comes up, but avoiding such mistakes is just skilled management, and a lot of skilled managers don’t ever have that luck.

@CloudyMrs That’s how most ideas start. 😜

@Yoshi @ChrisMayLA6 The UK has still not recovered from the damage to society wrought by Maggie Thatcher. I’m not sure we’ll ever fully recover from the damage of the last 14 years. For a start there are losses of economic growth and international stature which would require herculean effort to repair, and I think we may have lost both the skills and the will to put in that effort.
Maybe the best we can hope is that Labour slows the decline. 😢

@HighlandLawyer @Yoshi @ChrisMayLA6 I favour keeping the Union, but breaking England into Scotland-sized regions (by population/economy, not geography, of course), and giving all regions devolved Assemblies. Turn Westminster into just a Federal government.

@srtcd424 @thomasfuchs And then there’s like cars, but worse.

It feels like 2024 is going to be the make-or-break year for humanity. By next Christmas, we could be facing run-away global heating, Long Covid rampant, a Russian win in Ukraine and Trump heading for US presidency, or we could be seeing the first sign of a return to stability.
Never has activism been so important. Stay strong, my friends!

@ryanhoulihan I sympathise with your views, but we have to start somewhere. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

@SeanJones If I understand this correctly, it will cause foreigners here for academic work to move to other countries, yet further reducing our soft power. And of course other students/postgrads won’t consider coming here in the first place.
A more subtle effect may be a reduction in volunteers. I have worked on charity projects here in Cambridge staffed almost entirely by the spouses of foreigners working or studying here.

Today’s melt-down over the COP28 president’s near denial of climate science has set me thinking about the forces arraigned against doing what must be done to keep the planet habitable.
So, my question is this: has social change of the level that is needed to fix the environment ever been achieved without violent revolution?
#climate #COP28

@britishtechguru @lauxmyth @luckytran
Your point? Here’s a chart on the timescale of hundreds of thousands of years. Never has there been a step change comparable to the effects of industrialisation.
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/11/15/the-scariest-climate-graph-of-all/

@siderea I just block people who post prickly replies. Sorry, but that includes you.

A reminder: unemployment benefit is pay to do nothing. Unconditional Basic Income is pay to do anything.
Which do you think is of more benefit to society?
#UBI

What has always puzzled me about Covid guidelines is that we have an analogue for airborne infection spread which is easily understood and easily verified by ordinary people: cigarette smoke.
If you can smell someone smoking near you, you are being exposed to their germs too. Simples! And cigarette smoke travels a lot further than 6ft/2m!
#Covid

@georgetakei It seems to be a universal truth. Right-wing supporters care more about themselves than about others. The sad irony is, for most such supporters, they are the ‘others’, let down and ignored by the people they elect

This is truly terrifying. If the Gulf Stream fails, there will be massive and probably irreversible consequences.
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/gulf-stream-weakening-now-99-certain-and-ramifications-will-be-global

@selzero
My guess…
Bell
Stoker
Nintendo
Fax

@ChrisMayLA6 Two things can be true at the same time. 😁
The UK’s malaise is deep-seated and has been around for a century. Membership of the EU hid its most egregious effects, but Brexit has turned it into a crisis.
The root cause is probably British exceptionalism — we have a wildly inflated idea of both our importance and our competence. And nowhere is this more evidenced than in our political system and the incompetence of our politicians.

Take your holiday on the Bibby Stockholm.. 😁
https://youtube.com/shorts/k6pNRGSkhvQ?feature=share

@dansup This should apply to political parties too.