Notices by Flick ?? (flick@spinster.xyz)

Ah, that’s better: back to proper English weather with no glowy Death Star. We even had a little shower first thing, so there was a lovely smell of petrichor.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate AIUI, it’s illegal for the lawyers to take money from them on account of terrorists, so they’re working for free.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate I had been vaguely thinking I’d watch it next time I bought a sub for something else, but not now I’ve seen how much the usual suspects are wetting themselves over it.

Issues were reported with the livestream due to the technology involved as it was similar to a conference call, meaning that observers had to mute their microphones and switch off cameras or risk impacting proceedings, which did happen a number of times.

This is bonkers. I’m not a coder or a viewer of livestreams, but it is surely trivial for whichever software provider to create a version in which there are two classes of participant, one that can speak and one that is permanently muted. Is this just the UK courts being shit with technology? It’s been five years since they started doing this, is it really the case that no one has looked into a better solution than whatever they are currently using?

I know you can have more than one person on the same substack stream.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/09/the-real-reason-labour-refuses-to-tackle-the-rape-gangs/

Labourites’ refusal to look this issue in the eye is not just about raw political calculation. No doubt, they would rather Labour councils were not held to account for their complicity and negligence. No doubt, they are gripped by the genuinely racist conviction that tackling the rape gangs too aggressively might ‘alienate’ voters in inner-city, predominantly Muslim areas – as if Pakistani Brits aren’t also appalled by what has been going on in the shadows of their communities.

But it goes much deeper than that. Labour is lost to an ideology that is obsessed with looking good and thus incapable of doing good. That thinks protecting the image of multiculturalism is more important than protecting children from rape. That cannot compute victims when they do not conform to their prefab hierarchy of victimhood. That thinks the truth is a dangerous thing, because the plebs can’t handle it. That thinks the working classes are a race-riot-in-waiting. That has jettisoned class politics for identity politics.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/german-journalist-sentenced-to-seven

The headline says it all:

German journalist sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme poking fun at the Interior Minister's lack of commitment to free speech

This is like when somebody calls you violent and so you punch them in the nose to show them how wrong they are

Hot girl-on-girl action this morning.

@Gelatinousrube @Lady_Penelope wtf is a cricket bar??

@BowsacNoodle No issues, but individual pots are better if you have space. Less root disturbance when you plant them out.

@BowsacNoodle The “rules” about plant spacing assume you are creating a monoculture bed. Polyculture is both more interesting and more healthy (both for disease and for nutrients). If you mix the plants up, you can largely ignore crop spacing rules. This winter, I had a French tarragon survive outside, much to my surprise: I assume the kale planted much too close (by “the rules”) sheltered it.

@BowsacNoodle @reallyangry Cucumbers most like to climb: build them a frame on the south side of the space. Zucchini sprawl, put them at the edges and guide them away from the other plants.

@BowsacNoodle But I doubt you’ll find a useful guide of the type you describe: too much variation even within species, eg I like two pak choi varieties, one about three inches high and six squared and another about six inches high and three squared.

@BowsacNoodle RHS.org.uk

Or just ask!

@Deplorable_Degenerate @BowsacNoodle @hindudindu That could lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings.

@BowsacNoodle I know!

On average, Apopo rats find an additional 40% of TB cases on top of those discovered by clinics. Since they started work 10 years ago, they have screened nearly half a million samples and detected more than 12,200 missed cases. They can get through 100 samples in 10 to 20 minutes: a human with a microscope takes four days to test the same number.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/dec/26/giant-rats-tanzania-tb-tuberculosis-african-pouched

After scampering about a sleek glass and aluminium cage, a rat named Riziwan has made a crucial discovery.

In just minutes, Riziwan has positively identified 13 people who may have tuberculosis. The discovery is potentially life-saving news for those whose sputum samples were marked as clear by their local health clinics. But it’s all in a day’s – or rather 15 minutes’ – work for Riziwan and the other giant African pouched rats that work at Belgian organisation Apopo’s TB centre in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Riziwan, now almost a year old, has been trained – almost since birth – to pick up the smell of the disease, which is notoriously difficult to detect.

To carry out his work, Riziwan is placed in a large cage. Into its base, technicians insert a metal bar holding 10 dishes of human sputum, sent to Apopo by a TB clinic. All samples have been heat-treated so there is no risk of infection to either rats or humans. One by one, metal grates in the bottom of the cage are opened to allow Riziwan to sniff each petri dish.

@BowsacNoodle Olive oil in your water butts to stop them being able to breed in them.

@carolen https://order-order.com/2025/03/31/the-times-perfectly-polite-asylum-hotel-was-slammed-by-labour-council-and-suffered-scabies-outbreak/

https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/03/the-uk-a-nation-in-crisis/

Once a beacon of stability, democracy, and economic prosperity, I noticed social, political, and economic fractures that have widened, leaving me concerned the UK is in terrible danger, heading towards a cultural collapse.

The symptoms of this crisis were widespread – evidence of significant migration, declining cultural cohesion, increasing surveillance, policing of freedoms, economic stagnation, and a loss of national pride – many of the same problems we have recently witnessed in parts of Australia. But – in true British style – the UK is doing things on a much grander scale, with less sunshine.

https://archive.ph/OVz65

Right, you buggers.