Notices by Jonathan Schofield (urlyman@mastodon.social)

@killyourfm is Gangnam Style not allowed in toilets?

@thomasfuchs it’s a kind of religion. There is no persuading people.

For myself, when I was 28, I fractured my skull in a not very fast accident when I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I spent 3 days in hospital and 2 weeks off work.

I’ve worn a helmet ever since and have many times since banged my head at least as badly but have never had a fractured skull again 🤷♂️

“Citizen journalism is flowering, through the Bylines network, openDemocracy, Double Down News, Novara, Declassified and DeSmog, and in particular at the local level.

Most established local newspapers are a graveyard of good journalism. But they’re being pushed aside by innovative new outlets, such as Bristol Cable, Glasgow’s Bell, View Digital in Belfast, Manchester’s Mill, Leicester Gazette, West Country Voices , Birmingham’s Dispatch, Oxford Clarion [list continues]”
https://climatejustice.social/@GeofCox/115235467871830664

@aral excellent ✊

20th Century social mobility
Escape To The Country

2030s social mobility
Escape From The Country

…The last few decades have seen migration levels of about 3.5% to 4%, which today equates to about 300 million people. But Sunil emphasises that the majority of that is *in country*.

He also emphasises that, while there are some big drivers, the motivations for migration are as individual as the people migrating…

…The thought above occurred to me as I watched Escape To The Country with my mum this afternoon.

Thing is, a few days ago I learned from Sunil Amrith that:

“If we’re to take those [migrants] who’ve crossed a border, then in fact that proportion hasn’t changed in 20, 30, 40 years.

But what’s interesting is it was much higher in the 19th century. If you look at the peak of migration in the 1870s, then something like 8 or 9% of the global population could be considered to have been a migrant”…

…Sunil is author of The Burning Earth https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324007180 so he does of course have a particular focus to bring to the story of migration.

One which expects there to be about a billion people on the move by mid century.

Which won’t only be more in extent than ever before but at around 12% of all humans more than 3x higher as a proportion than today and higher than the 9% of the 19th Century

…Sunil Amrith is one of those people who are a delight to listen to on their subject. A superbly clear, gentle and easily understood communicator.

If we’re looking for people to talk us down from our current nightmarish fear of migrants, he seems to me exactly the kind of person to help us do it https://overcast.fm/+2tlWW7sVc

When we consider the last 26 years since 1999, and reflect on all the improvements we have made to democracy, how we’ve reduced the number of cars on the road, how we’ve learned to rein in casual long distance travel, how we’ve refit millions of homes for energy efficiency, how barely any of us eat meat anymore, how so much more food is domestically grown using regenerative techniques…

getting to net zero in 25 years is gonna be a piece of piss, right?

#climateDiary

State capture in Australia:

“Did you know that since 2001 almost every federal resources minister has gone to work for the fossil fuel industry shortly after leaving parliament?”

https://halo.nu/@theguardian_climate_crisis/115087906076440074

“Rose promptly deleted all their designs from Spreadshirt, closed their account, and emailed Spreadshirt to say they’ll sue if Spreadshirt ever touch their stuff with AI. Spreadshirt thanked Rose for the ‘candid feedback’.

It turns out artists despise AI. They want every AI vendor, particularly Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, fired into the sun. You think you hate AI, talk to an artist.”
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/115057384865009313

Inception: putting out a discussion about YouTube compression artefacts and general AI weirdness *on YouTube* 😬

https://youtu.be/86nhP8tvbLY?si=tEkpdpXun-OcBa7l

Pic: La Pethick, an 89-year old retired psychotherapist, one of 466 people arrested yesterday, is removed by 4 policemen.

For holding cardboard signs saying “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”

She and her fellow activists triggered the police into arresting over 120 more than the previous largest number of arrests in a single protest, thought to be the poll tax riots in 1990.

The photo is by Toby Shepheard for the Sunday Times.

#gaza #democracy

https://archive.ph/2025.08.09-205507/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/palestine-action-protests-march-5jgf7q6q8

…Before the protest, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: “We are aware that the organisers of Saturday’s planned protest are encouraging hundreds of people to turn out with the intention of placing a strain on the police and the wider criminal justice system.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/09/defiance-grows-uk-ban-palestine-protest-group-action

Which is exactly what is needed when idiot MPs pass bad law sculpted by a reactionary Home Secretary propping up indefensible foreign policy from a Labour government full of shit

If we say 1.5° is still alive then we don’t have to look at why it’s not.

If we keep “could” in the phrase “the world could soon become uninsurable” then we don’t have to consider that we are doing everything we can to ensure that it *will*.

Gotta stop that capitalism bubble from popping, even as we inflate it.

Not this quarter.
Not this quarter.
Not this quarter.
…
Not this quarter.
Oops

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/08/climate-insurers-are-worried-the-world-could-soon-become-uninsurable-.html

Gravel road ahead
#energyTransition

Went to a bank branch today to make a payment I have to make in person due to various factors.

Was waiting to be seen and overheard a conversation between a bank employee and another customer. The employee was dumbstruck by the customer not having internet access and therefore struggling to suggest next steps.

We are storing up *so* much trouble. Building systems that are failing people

“Gaza. I feel it particularly because I am Jewish. I know how much wickedness and cruelty were meted out to Jews in my lifetime. I was born in ’41 at the height of the Holocaust.
…
And so my heart is broken and I think the terrible thing I have to face is that Hitler won. He changed us. He made us like him.”

—Miriam Margolyes

https://mas.to/@therightarticle/114921420130573426

Imagine if 40 years ago tens of the world’s most prominent (mostly white, mostly male) musicians were all criminalised for protesting the Ethiopian famine.

Imagine a law being passed only the day before BandAid so the concert going ahead anyway. But the Met Police turning up, closing all the doors to Wembley, commandeering the PA and announcing that everyone in the stadium was under arrest