Notices by Jonathan Schofield (urlyman@mastodon.social), page 3

@Gargron Europe consumes ~5x more oil than it produces.

We have voted for the growth that has led us here: https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/115717152261231548 So politicians will follow that course.

Every European that wants to be free of US hegemony should do everything in their power to reduce their personal energy footprint and to vote at every opportunity for degrowth

“Anubis is a Web AI Firewall Utility that ‘weighs the soul of your connection’ using one or more challenges to protect upstream resources from scraper bots.

It’s designed to help protect the small internet from the endless storm of requests that flood in from AI companies.
…
In most cases, you shouldn’t need this and can probably get by using Cloudflare to protect a given origin. However, for circumstances where you can’t or won’t, Anubis is there for you.”

https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

Been mulling “freedom” quite a bit recently. In part because we’re working our way through Ken Burns’s series on the American Revolution. But also in relation to threads like https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke/115791005472764489 by @simon_brooke and @amiserabilist’s reply which brings the sheer scale of compute to the fore.

I think this century is going to be about being much less free.

The Founding Fathers sculpted a country utterly obsessed with freedom to exploit. AI projects are awash with notions of ‘good’ uses but…

…What could go wrong with health data for 68 million people being in the hands of TESCREAL cultists?

And what would Aneurin Bevan think?

A “new improved” NHS app is in the news.

Worth pointing out that its data enriches Palantir, headed up by these 7 people, replete with very bad ideas.

This started under the Tories, Wes Streeting is doubling down.

(left to right, by row)

1. Alexander Karp:
here’s what he’s about: https://newrepublic.com/article/191786/alex-karps-war-west-palantir

2. Alexander Moore
3. Alexandra Schiff
4. Stephen Cohen

5. Peter Thiel
some of his ideas covered here: https://www.netopia.eu/tescreal-or-how-to-tell-if-your-broligarch-is-after-your-soul-or-just-your-money/

6. Lauren Friedman Stat
7. Eric Woersching

…An extract from the Thiel link above:

“He laid out the plan almost 40 years ago as co-founder and editor-in-chief of student newspaper Stanford Review when he articulated the manifesto for Silicon Valley’s dominance:

1. No regulation
2. No taxes
3. No copyright
4. No competition.”

He’s “suggested datacenters be set up on abandoned oil rigs on international water in order to escape government intervention”.

“his 2014 book, From Zero to One, advocates niche monopolies as business strategy”

#climateDiary

Excellent but grim graphic marrying the Keeling Curve with warming stripes in the manner of @ed_hawkins’s work.

The graphic is by Peter Gericke, Marius Hasenheit, @muellertadzio, and Wiebke Witt, via Rees Cat Ophuls, and featured in https://climatejustice.social/@muellertadzio/115541168340873352

“According to the Global Carbon Project’s latest numbers, vegetation-based CDR is currently absorbing the equivalent of about 5% of annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions, while technology-based CDR accounts for only about one-millionth of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuels”

That harnessing nature for Carbon Dioxide Removal outperforms industrial attempts at CDR by a factor of 50,000 should tell us something
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/07/net-zero-distracts-from-scientific-imperative-to-eliminate-fossil-fuels-cop30

@manualdousuario and every *subscribe to my Substack* form that’s not on Substack. And thousands of other uses

@davidgerard @alexb

@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