Notices by Jules (afewbugs@social.coop)

In response to the police raid on #WestminsterMeetingHouse, #Quakers are organising a #MeetingForWorship outside New Scotland Yard on Thursday. People of all faiths and none welcome.

https://mailchi.mp/d312ad2f1001/quaker-faith-in-action-october-16511620?e=6ffe430c3f

#Quaker #NonViolent #DirectAction #YouthDemand #RightToProtest #London

I'm not knocking the Grecians here, but I do find it fascinating that a crowd of football fans can block a road with a #SlowMarch on the way to a match and get indulgent nods and smiles, but if they were calling for clean air, better insulation in a time of #FuelPoverty and #ClimateCrisis or an end to the bombing of Gaza there would be immediate calls to lock them up for the disruption they're causing.

#RightToProtest #UKPol #JustStopOil #InsulateBritain #ExeterCity

I don't want an AI assistant to "help me keep track of information from across the web" I just want everything I follow to have an RSS feed 😢

Step aside Nicole, I found a picture of the real Fediverse Chick

In case anyone was following our minor domestic dramas, you may remember that our washing machine broke and had to be replaced in January. Our fridge has now broken, and it seems likely we broke it ourselves when we pulled it out to get the new washing machine in buy putting it too close to the wall so it couldn't vent waste heat properly and the motor burnt out. Sharing this just in case someone on Mastodon is right this moment wondering how close to the wall to put their fridge.

More Than Half Of Brits Unaware Cows Must Be Impregnated To Produce Milk, Survey Finds
https://plantbasednews.org/animals/brits-unaware-cows-impregnated-milk/

@albertcardona at a bit of a tangent I hope someday we do end up producing milk in factories like she thought. I do find it weird how much effort goes into producing lab grown meat where you have to get the texture right and get the cells in suspension into a solid lump, rather than already liquid tissues like milk or egg yolk or albumin

This morning I put my jumper on, thought it was backwards, turned it round, realised now it really was backwards, turned it round and put it on again. This must be what wearing a USB stick would feel like.

Time to reshare I think. “I don’t want my portraits to hang in your offices, because the president is not an icon or an idol. Hang pictures of your children there and look them in the eyes before every decision” – Volodymyr Zelensky

@aral thank you. It shouldn't be hard, it should just be the basics, but I really struggled so I appreciate it!

Thinking about this excellent thread https://helvede.net/@jwcph/114029855409119327 and why it's so hard to challenge racist family members, because honestly this is a problem I've had - I find it far easier to challenge strangers, colleagues and friends than I do family, and I wonder if some musings on why would help other people who are the same.

1/🧵

I recently had to make a phonecall to tell a relative that while she was invited to my wedding her husband was not, because not only did he harm people with what he said his entire job involves working to harm people and actively bringing about the current state of the world. And that was honestly the hardest phonecall I've every had to make in my life, up there with phoning my brother to tell him my aunt had died.

2/🧵

I was 100% justified here, so why was that so emotionally hard? It went against all the conditioning I've had all my life, as a white middle class British woman, that above all else you have to be polite to the people around you but especially family. The relative actually said "I don't believe in confusing the personal and the political" - this is the sort of very British middle class environment I come from, where this sort of thing is a matter of debate not something affecting lives.

3/🧵

And on top of the foundation of middle class politeness at all costs I've also got a thick layer of the good old geek social fallacy, that the most harmful, hurtful thing you can do to someone is exclude them. https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ So I had to fight the subconscious idea that I wasn't just not inviting this guy, I was actively harming him and probably my relative too

4/🧵

And then running through all that is thread of growing up most probably undiagnosed autistic, and having internalised the idea that failing to do the expected thing in a social situation was probably going to hurt, upset or anger some one and that this would be entirely my fault for being somehow Wrong As A Person in some way I couldn't understand.

5/🧵

So yeah, it was really fucking hard. I'm not looking for a cookie or sympathy or something, obviously it needs to be done because the amount of harm these kind of people do to others far outweighs the difficulty challenging them causes to us. But I hope explaining why I personally found it hard helps someone else to understand why they find it hard, and maybe makes it easier to do.

end/🧵

I highly recommend using Signal for your DnD group chat, Tor to look up hummus recipes and an encrypted email for your wedding RSVPs. The more people are using this sort of thing for completely innocuous stuff the less suspicious it becomes, and as a bonus you feel like you're doing something helpful while you're working out minicabs and compiling your Auntie Mary's dietary requirements.

@Sbectol @hiramfromthechi it's a really difficult issue that a friend of mine who was IT security manager at a hospice had to grapple with. Relatives bring them in for patients who can't move very much and it genuinely is helpful for their quality of life to be able to just ask to have music or podcasts or whatever played when they ask. If you can't lift your head or hands you have so little control of your environment. He ultimately banned them but felt bad about it

AI is bad for the environment, and the problem is bigger than energy consumption
https://theconversation.com/ai-is-bad-for-the-environment-and-the-problem-is-bigger-than-energy-consumption-247842

"In our recently published paper...my students and I argue that AI changes how humans perceive environmental challenges in ways that obscure the accountability of powerful entities, ignore marginalized communities and promote cautious and incremental solutions that are drastically out of sync with the timeline required to avert environmental crises"

Woman travels from Cornwall to Manchester by flying via Spain because it was half the price of the train ticket
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3n23ex14lo

This sort of madness is why we need proper rail and flight pricing structures that are reflective of their climate impacts

#FlightFree #RailPricing #ClimateCrisis #AviationFuelDuty