Notices by Will Tuladhar-Douglas (yetiinabox@todon.nl)

I am spending a completely inordinate amount of time trying to buy a refurbished server to replace our ancient on-premises server. If anyone happens to know a trustworthy, savvy vendor of refurbished Dell PowerEdge servers in the UK (in Scotland?) feel free to message me with recommendations.

@boud @libreleah
Thank you. I know about Leah's work and the Libreboot machines (and yours!) and admire both.

Under ideal circumstances I'd be setting up a new server that was
-- low power, moving to solar
-- fully libre
...but I just don't have the spoons to sort that right now.

It will be
-- BSD
-- good open software - Nextcloud, Docuwiki, Koha

I have had to accept my limits, though. Between being the only parent for two kids, doing a really tough (non-tech) job, and keeping an eye on my own health, I need to get a reliable clunker in for the job.

When I can finally set up the Buddhist hermitage/community hub that is in my dreams, I will have the luxury of not compromising on the infrastructure. Not yet, not yet.

In 2024, I asked "Why have there been *no* fascist riots in #Scotland so far?"

We now live with weekly xenophobic protests in several Scottish cities.

We still work very hard to make #NewScots safe.

From 2021-4 I worked with local government, the third sector, universities, and Scottish government on this : https://newscots.scot .

We are held up as an example by UNHCR of how to promote welcoming, trauma-informed integration. And it sort of works, even if it's unfunded. There is really awful white nationalist #racism in Scotland - nonetheless, attitudes here are more open and welcoming than in England. But it requires a continuous, thoughtful commitment across all layers of society. It isn't a "natural feature" of Scotland. We achieve this - and now that xenophobic, fearty politics is being normalised, we have to work much harder.

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A small addendum:

The funding for my post finished in 2024, so if anyone wants to hire me let me know. I'm working on a different project, but if there is a policy team, government, charity, or university who wants to pursue evidence-based, active tolerance and peace building, let me know. Happy to relocate if it's a permanent post, delighted to consult if it's helpful.

My deepest passion is for work that embraces both ecology and society - sacred gardens, Indigenous stewardship of biodiversity, herbal medicines in diasporas, learning from environmental refugees - and practical, radical ethics.

#FediHire

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I have a new hobby. You see, our local Lidl is where a lot of the refugees in "temporary asylum accommodation" shop. And they are trying to get food that feels like actual food, in a place where there have been some really nasty xenophobic protests.

The other day it was two guys from South Sudan, and I have never seen two such tall, fine people try so hard to be invisible. But they were staring at the.tomatoes and about to buy the big, pretty, tasteless ones. Very carefully I stood next to them and picked up the small, tasty, same-price-or-cheaper ones and said, "these ones taste better." They heard me, but they weren't going to risk a conversation. So I said, to them, "These small tomatoes taste much better." Now they knew I was definitely talking to them, and having a normal market conversation.

"Better?"

"Yes, better, and not expensive. Sudan?"

"Yes! South Sudan." (Guarded smile)

"Welcome! I'm glad you're here. The fruit is better in South Sudan, isn't it?" (Other people are listening now, and see that these two men are far from home and miss home food, and how can someone like that be scary?)

Now we kept talking around the shop. And they straightened up and stood comfortably, and got better, cheaper food.

So that's my new hobby. Being friendly to refugees buying fruit.

Hallo fedinauts.

My child (university age) is teaching themselves Japanese and has got to the point where they need a qualified instructor to teach grammar and spoken language skills. They understand basic conversation and have taught themselves at least 750 kanji.

Does anyone have contacts for native Japanese speakers who know how to teach Japanese as a foreign language? We've looked locally, so now we're looking for someone who is happy to teach online.

#日本語 #Japanese #fedifind #request #teacher

The massive glacial flow in Blatten is a good metaphor, I guess.

"We had been aware of cracks, of pressure; we knew it was serious enough to prepare, but no one expected *this*. Yet in retrospect we should have. Huh."

And someone has to find a new shelter someplace "safer", and look after the kids, and make food on a temporary stove, and deal with paperwork.

And in a superdiverse alpine landscape, a thousand ledges and outcrops and gullies with gentians and mosses and evanescent bulbs...are gone.

But the company that conveniently sold and delivered that stove, and the company that makes diesel diggers rooting through the rubble, and the company that sold cloud computing services to the geological survey department, and the tourist airlines worried about a drop in revenue, and the insurance brokers...they adjust their business practices to deal with any temporary effect on future economic growth and then just market all the harder.

"In retrospect we should have. Huh."

सर्वं दु:खम्। सर्वमनित्यम् । सर्वमनात्मकम् ।

#mountains #extinction #ecology #metaphor

Yet more solid science for solarpunk: mycobatteries.

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-versatile-fungi-based-material-resistant.html

200 vultures poisoned by poachers seeking body parts for lucrative international trade. They laced the carcass of an elephant. 80 survived because of fast rescue by South African wildlife rangers.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/vultures-rescued-from-mass-poisoning-in-south-african-game-reserve

Just as with the white rhino, poachers know that if they kill more vultures, and the vultures become scarce, the price goes up. It's a perverse incentive to actually drive desirable animals to extinction.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56732-x

One of the challenges in the practice of engaged Buddhism is finding the middle way between compassionate action and attachment to politics.

From the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattvas, by Gyalse Tokme Zangpo (translation by Adam Pearcey)

གཉེན་གྱི་ཕྱོགས་ལ་འདོད་ཆགས་ཆུ་ལྟར་གཡོ། །
དགྲ་ཡི་ཕྱོགས་ལ་ཞེ་སྡང་མེ་ལྟར་འབར། །
བླང་དོར་བརྗེད་པའི་གཏི་མུག་མུན་ནག་ཅན། །
ཕ་ཡུལ་སྤོང་བ་རྒྱལ་སྲས་ལག་ལེན་ཡིན། །

The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to leave behind one’s homeland,
Where our attachment to family and friends overwhelms us like a torrent,
While our aversion towards enemies rages inside us like a blazing fire,
And delusion’s darkness obscures what must be adopted and abandoned.

https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/gyalse-thogme-zangpo/37-practices-all-bodhisattvas

On the importance of herbaria, botanic gardens, seed banks, and all...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02644-4

This week I'm training as a Unison shop steward. I'm in a room full of people who are asking questions like "Will I lose my job because I stand up for other workers?" and "How do we make good jobs now and work for a livable planet for our kids?". We're learning employment law and how to run meetings that are safe and energizing and work-shopping each others' challenges.

And then I read about Musk revealing himself, and my kid tells me they're having nightmares about Trump coming to our house to kill us because we sprawl outwith lots of his wee little boxes, and I guess it's going to be like this for a long while, innit.

#union
#antifa
#organize
#ecoanarchism

@cstross @pzmyers

the problem with the Templeton lot is that they push a terrifyingly narrow version of religion in which everything reduces to a pleasantly intolerant Christianity, but claim to represent (or defend against atheists and communists) some imaginary "universal human religiosity". Nasty. They are also one of the only sources of funding for research in religion, and they pay lots to folks who will wear their theories. Nasty, nasty.

@drmaddkap

They're not. I get that you're asking a rhetorical question, but I used to teach university ethics classes, including a wonderful class called Radical Practical Ethics. Lots of educators, mentors, and usefully difficult people do indeed challenge us.

The question might better be phrased,
Why would any teacher use their position of power and authority to distract their students with artificially individualised moral riddles rather than analyse the structures and processes of collective oppression and inequality in play at this very moment - and how to dismantle them?

...which is another rhetorical question, I suppose, but it does get us closer to answering the original question.

When life gives you a platform for suffering beings, you can crave the audience and imagine you are helping, or work together to tear down the stage and the walls that keep all of you in the theatre.

@GarethDennis
Having read through your delightful manifesto, I am left with a few questions.

1) sea level rise and existing rail routes. Even at only 5m of sea level rise, many bits of existing rail networks, certainly in the UK, will be compromised. If we are planning rail infrastructure for 100+ years, doesn't this mean we have to reroute rather than maintain?

2) More generally, it seems to me that one of the important insights rail planning demands is a ruthless honesty about the inevitable changes to the landscape that comes with thinking in terms of infrastructure for a century, not just a decade.

3) Mode share with flying - do you think air travel will remain a viable form of mass transport in a 50-year timeframe? Or will slower forms of long-haul travel again become normal?

Very, very desirable job alert.

@thecontinent is hiring someone to drive up distribution and circulation.

Go help fix the world.

Standing up to the PRC - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3289790/paraguay-expels-chinese-diplomat-urging-lawmakers-sever-ties-taiwan

This is an interesting story not just because of Paraguay's determination to resist PRC pressure, but also because it shows how the PRC instrumentalizes international organisations like UNESCO. Another example; because - according to CCP doctrine - there are "no Indigenous people in China", Taiwanese Indigenous activists and intellectuals are often denied admission to international fora. The PRC government simply says they don't exist, so can't be represented.

Anarchism, memory, justice.

A 96 year old person says,

“Being an anarchist now is no different from 50 years ago. It’s a philosophy and a search for truth. What I want is unity, of Europe and, were it possible, of the whole world, without frontiers, a world in which we all understand each other.”

This person survived Franco's prisons.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/its-about-justice-fighter-from-guerrilla-war-sues-spanish-government-for-1m

I have a request for the #ttrpg and #socialJustice folks.

Strap in; I don't usually do threads. But I need help from the angriest, un-White-est, un-eurocentric-ist corners, un-bound-by-gender-norm-ist corners of this place, the folks who play joyfully with their allies and kids because it's not a luxury, it's what we fight for.

(Sealions will be blocked instantly.)

My family---my children---love role playing games, and I have used collusive narratives with some rules, lots of world building, and dice since they were very small. But now that they are old enough to go looking on the internet, to read the rulebooks... we have a serious representation problem.

I guess it's (roughly) comparable to the systematic oppression in the #Fedi, though I really, really don't want to trivialise-by-comparison the appalling violence that Black heroes here are struggling to name and dismantle.

But when we look at the popular play-along videos or the books or whatever - we *are* the exotic at best, the horrors at worst. Everyone in those videos are the people who describe us as "the interesting family", the people who sabotaged our autism support groups with their instinctive racism, gender norms (and layer upon layer of other -isms).

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