Notices by Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ (christineburns@mastodon.green)

There’s a burgeoning genre of displaced and confused Americans gradually filling YouTube with their incredulous observations about how life is different from ‘home’ in whatever country they migrated. On one level it’s fascinating to see the ways in which US citizens grow up blind to the fact that their cultural norms are globally abnormal. On the other hand I’ve found it all rapidly becoming unwatchable as none of them really had to be that ignorant of the world out there.

Did another tour of the heat pump for some neighbours this afternoon. These ones are looking to install a new heating system in a property they rent out and they wanted to thoroughly understand what’s involved in the upgrade process. Measurements were taken and they admired my spreadsheets so they’re serious!

A pleasant surprise after my first significant drive in Hattie the Dolphin yesterday: 5.6 miles per kWh. I thought I was Queen of the soft right foot averaging 4.3 m/kWh in Olga the LEAF but this is next level. This was on a mix of urban, motorway and rural driving out into mid Cheshire. The official range of the car is 265 miles on its 60.5kWh battery and the car is still using that to estimate the remaining range on 73% charge but I see the possibility of getting 300 miles in summer!

Workers at an Amazon warehouse were told to ignore the fact that a co-worker had died on the job, turn their backs and carry on as if nothing had happened. And the techbros wonder why they are becoming as hated as tobacco and oil oligarchs.

https://www.thewesternedge.media/p/everyone-is-replaceable-death-rattles

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/116364274494476840

The United States: The country where half the states passed hundreds — literally hundreds — of bills restricting transgender citizens because they’re in season but only one has succeeded so far in restricting data centres chewing up the planet we live on.

Well, it seems to be the consensus among neighbours that what with the EV, the heat pump, solar and battery, this will henceforth be known as “the Eco House”. Requests are starting for tours though so that’s good.

America looks set to launch four astronauts today on a circumlunar mission essentially repeating what three astronauts did in late 1968. That’s 58 years to reinvent the wheel. It’s not even a proving flight for later moon landing missions really because NASA will be changing the booster stack used to get there and we’ve yet to see the landing vehicles. There’s some very brave PR claiming this is going further than Apollo 8 but I feel unmoved. Launching on April 1st is so apposite.

The “Christian Revival” is a lie. In fact the numbers are shrinking even further than before the Pandemic.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1oz2Zl4cxk0&si=sEkFb6ftz__arQc8

What on earth do you do with a Prime Minister who frames dropping bombs on another country as “defence”. We are in a topsy-turvey world where words don’t mean what you thought they meant all along but, as in this instance, the direct opposite. No good can come of this headlong rush into the place where all rational axioms — the very basis for all understanding of everything else — are up for grabs.

Spot the odd one out…

https://youtube.com/shorts/xXd20VDrLII?si=2lElgjHV7Rgl5RAP

Good Law Project partially lost their High Court action challenging the EHRC’s interim guidance and promise they will fundraise to appeal the decision. In the meantime they gained important rulings on parts of the law’s interpretation (where trans people are customers) and this most likely leaves their final (unpublished) guidance in need of a serious rewrite. This result shows that the Supreme Court decision upending interpretation of the Equality Act created a mess.
https://goodlawproject.org/resource/faqs-trans-inclusion-after-the-high-court-decision-on-the-ehrcs-interim-guidance/

First thing Monday morning a man will be taking out my combi boiler. Then another man will remove the gas meter. All this whilst work starts on installing my new Octopus Cosy heat pump system. It should be heating the radiators by the end of Wednesday but, in the meantime, I’m watching next week’s forecast like a hawk! PS. I quite like the Met Office’s revised app, especially on iPad.

The weirdest excavator I’ve ever seen! I think they’re referred to as spiders and they can lift each leg independently and widen or narrow their track whilst the cabin does a full 360. There must be a temptation for the driver to play all day. One was in action this week, clambering down into the bed of the breached Llangollen Canal to help dig out narrowboats that had been washed into the void.

Most days now it is hard not to entertain the thought that a huge chunk of British society is having an ongoing and unfolding nervous breakdown, afraid of its own shadow.

Yesterday I got the date for the installation of my heat pump system (w/c 19th Jan) and so, after eighteen months of fun minimising my electricity bill with daily Agile pricing, I’m having to think about switching to Octopus’s tariff custom designed for heat pumps. Octopus Cosy provides eight hours of half price power spread over three periods and I’ll initially be programming the system to make the best of that — at least until the solar and battery are installed too.

It seems to me that the very thing the Supreme Court DID NOT DO when it ruled on the meaning of ‘sex’ for the purposes of the Equality Act back in April was to offer any “Much needed clarity” as claimed by Keir Starmer. In fact what they achieved was to create total chaos for everyone — not least trans people, who’ve been exposed to eight months of performative cruelty by a shocking array of commentators. Playing amateur lawyers.

From what I can see, this is a European Edible Dormouse (named because the Romans ate them. They’re apparently common in the south of England but believed less so up here in the North West. I wasn’t setting out to catch one but, as they’re protected, I put him outside not too far from his kith and kin and away from the trails favoured by the cats.

The first time I’ve ever caught anything in one of my humane mousetraps! A very sweet little Dormouse. Liberated him outside.. The photo is as closeup as I could get and is unfortunately distorted by the clear plastic of the trap having gone a little milky. Anyway… I know now that Genoa cake works as a lure.

60,000 cisgender women write powerful open letter in support of trans community: ‘We have had enough’ - PinkNews https://apple.news/Asj3iNfCWRDiK__ZYu-E5vA

Tomorrow will be one whole calendar month since I deleted my ‘BBC ID’ and all their apps from my devices: iPlayer, Sounds and News. Do I miss the right wing captured state broadcaster? Nah. I’m still well informed but less frustrated by bias passing as ‘balance’.