Notices by Jonathan Schofield (urlyman@mastodon.social), page 2

The vision of #Eurovision is that genocide is fine if it’s outside European borders and a non-European genocidal nation wants to pay enough to join in

Words are not immutable boxes. We may wish for their boundaries to be protected but they cannot be.

We cannot stop ‘sick’ becoming ‘good’, or ‘oversight’ meaning to oversee and also to miss through inattention.

The job of words is to be understood *in the moment*, in a context. For their intent to be a discernible eddy in a current.

And then the current flows on by and there is no protection to be had

The vox pops about Labour people switching to Reform are bleakly fascinating. The trite assumption is that such people are racist at the root but I don’t think that’s likely for many.

What it suggests to me is *how* people arrive at their final choice matters most. The *what* that they think they’re voting for is secondary

TIL that Labour are so shocked at the drubbing that they’ve received in yesterday’s Local and Devolved elections that a whopping 5% of their Westminster MPs have declared a loss of trust in Keir Starmer.

Good to see such clarity and boldness emerging

/s

It is quite striking that even though Israel has expanded its terrorism from regional genocide and ecocide to now holding the entire world to ransom in pursuit of its plans for Greater Israel – a chokehold which threatens the viability of European societies – the European Council of the European Union cannot bring itself to say anything by way of admonishment except “deep concern” about the death penalty.

Here’s the Council’s press statements filtered by “Israel”:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/

“The IDF, the world’s leading killer of journalists, was blocking rescue operations.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:evgc4ukadedre3gwsiwygkpz/post/3mk4dbingv22m

#Eurovision

It’s been clear for a couple of years, but in 2026 it is especially clear that in supporting Israel’s entry to its contest, #Eurovision is an enabler of terrorism https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yvn036evlo

…The strong implication above is that lithium extraction is fine and just a part of a “transition that must happen as quickly as it can”.

The reality is more uncomfortable.

Renewables (rebuildables) are much more metals intensive than fossil fuels and nuclear. Which, if we are as strategically inattentive as we currently are, carries in it the seeds of its own downfall

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116351244625787731

This Renew Economy article does a good job of deconstructing the disinformation around cobalt and renewables, pointing out that…

“Nearly every big battery installed in Australia these days uses lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which means no cobalt, and no nickel”

and that…

“cobalt has been used widely in many industries”

…which long predate the current boom for rebuildables.

But it contains a kind of disinformation of its own by omission…

https://reneweconomy.com.au/wild-attack-on-batteries-and-renewables-by-7s-spotlight-program-falls-over-at-the-first-fact-check/

…Our dilemma is that we’re a culture addicted to uninterrupted and growing power consumption.

So if we don’t keep the implications of that front and centre as we advocate for the transition from one set of minerals to another set of minerals, we’re just shifting where the fragility of our economics is located without fundamentally ratcheting down the fragility

So far, only about 1% of the British electorate has registered an interest in having a vote on channeling water management away from dumping effluent for profit and instead into public ownership for health.

Perhaps we can bump the numbers a bit, at least to the point where how not to enshittify what we drink and cook with might be debated by MPs?

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/762640

What kind of rich is Ireland?

“They feel: the 3-hour commute in traffic, the closed GP list, the €2,200 rent, the 14-month wait for an MRI, the buses that don’t come, the trains that don’t exist, the schools with no places, the pubs that close before midnight, the €12 sandwiches.

And they keep being told: Ireland is the second richest country in Europe with a €23 billion surplus, record employment, and even if you’re not happy with this, just shut up and put up.”
https://mastodon.ie/@ccferrie/116407638837677583

“BIG, POORLY RUN” you say?
https://mastodon.social/@MAKS23/116373058838530359

Image description by @aral https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116373480015097739

I’m aware that the likes of Ember say we could save 40% with full electrification: https://ember-energy.org/focus-areas/electrification/

Which could bring Europe’s current 38 EJ primary energy demand [1] down to 22.8.

But in November 2025, before the Gulf war, the European Environment Agency were projecting that renewables might meet 42.5% of Europe’s demand in 2030: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/share-of-energy-consumption-from

So if Europe managed a steady-state from here (tricky), renewables could be generating roughly 16 EJ by the end of the decade?…

In the same time period, the world’s privately-owned oil companies have made $5 billion in elevated profits.

So we might infer that the price of a tonne of carbon should be $1,000 per tonne.

The EU has one of the highest carbon prices. It’s currently at about €68 ($79), so at least 12x too low

#climateDiary https://mastodon.world/@davidho/116271391844076790

Spot on from David:

“The UK AI Action Plan is vaporware touted by spivs. The Government is going along with the vapor because they are utterly out of ideas and they need AI to be magic. So they’re not bothering to check anything — looking could only lead to disappointment. The press release is the entire project deliverable.”
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/116207192154450466

@tofm2

“in France in 1872, the government made a conscious decision not to collect certain kinds of data about people, including data about their religious affiliation,” Veliz said. “The result was that the Nazis found and killed about 73 percent of the Jewish population in the Netherlands, and in France, 25 percent of the Jewish population were killed.”

@junesim63

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111776292820572600

“When will [an LLM] shortening the text be good enough for a reliable summary? Probably only when summarising consists of nothing else than turning something unnecessarily repetitive and long-winding into something short. That is far less of a use case than people think.
…
It really might take a while until people have experienced enough of this for GPT-fever to pass.”
https://helvede.net/@jwcph/116122024069598014

I spent quite a bit of time on BlueSky for several months and found that if you’re a nobody there is close to no engagement. If you’re a somebody, the platform laps it up.

But on Mastodon the conversation flows irrespective of who you are.

I know where I’d rather be https://fediscience.org/@kathhayhoe/116065653289142235

I look at other people’s
languages on here and I don’t have to understand them to see that they are just beautiful.

People modelling large language scopes are wondrous. Machines modelling languages for profit at the expense of habitability are shit