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

@HebrideanHecate @inscius Probably! He’d had it kicking around for years just waiting for the right project.

@inscius I have mentioned it before — it’s my new log store, and when I commissioned it the guy insisted that I had to go over and see the piece of wood in person, even though I’d seen it in photos and said it was lovely — but not posted a photo previously.

Not a bad turn of phrase here, either:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/19/all-power-to-the-farmers-revolt/

The Guardian-reading classes seem to think that energy comes from the plug socket and food comes from Ocado, rather than from the hard graft of those whose livelihoods Labour now seems willing to decimate. […]

Starmer and Reeves could do with learning the lessons of recent history. In 2000, an arrogant New Labour government initially refused to rescind a rise in fuel duty despite protests from farmers and hauliers. A militant farmer from South Wales, among others, responded by leading farmers and lorry drivers in a blockade of roads, oil refineries and fuel-shipping terminals. This eventually brought the state to its knees and prompted the government to perform a humiliating u-turn.

@ninapaley @Gnomeshatecheese I hope this isn’t a quiet cancelling technique.

@Gnomeshatecheese @ninapaley Same here FWIW. Hypothesis: only available in NA/US so it’s just not showing it to us?

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/11/13/the-war-on-fertiliser-comes-to-britain/

Having made an excellent start in trying to make British citizens both colder and poorer, the Net Zero fanatics in the new Labour Government are turning their attention to making them hungrier. New taxes on agricultural fertiliser could add £150 million to the costs of local farmers faced with a choice of producing less food or raising prices. Such bravery in the governing Ship of Fools can only be admired. When President Gotabaya Rajapaka of Sri Lanka imposed a ban on similar fertiliser, the local harvest failed and he was forced to hightail it out of the country in a military jet ahead of an angry delegation of concerned citizens. One protester, G. P. Nimal, told the BBC that they wanted to put the Rajapakas in an open prison, “where they can do farm work”.

The U.K. Finance Minister has confirmed plans to levy a ‘carbon’ import duty on a number of vital supplies including fertiliser, cement and aluminium. The Daily Telegraph reports that the tax could be around £50 to £75 a tonne. It is not clear how much extra the farmers will have to pay since the tax applies to imports from countries that don’t load so-called carbon penalties on fertiliser production. Lord Fuller, Chairman of the liquid fertiliser firm Brineflow, suggests that farmers will have to bear an extra annual burden of £150 million.

I have a very dear friend who has been in a relationship for some forty years. He’s the higher earner by far, at least partly because he encouraged her to follow her passion in a low-earning field. I’ve been incredibly worried and angry for years, because he refused to get married purely on principle because he disapproves of the concept.

His father died relatively recently, and going through all the legal stuff seems to have made him finally realise that just leaving her everything in his will is not actually as good as marriage, so they recently slipped off to the registry office and did the paperwork.

I am incredibly relieved about this, but also — as a result of a long ago and drunken conversation that I no longer really recall and had not thought of in years — the second thing out of my mouth when she told me was “Now I need to make you a cushion shaped like a toaster!”

So, if anyone happens to have a suitable pattern, please let me know.

@AlphaKiloPapa I’m struggling to see the downside here of his ensuring that his now-wife has the best possible tax position if he dies first.

@AlphaKiloPapa I’m sorry you feel that way.

@inscius Very strange.

@inscius That’s weird.

@inscius And at the age of eleven!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn030kjz04xo.amp

A mum has said her 11-year-old daughter returned home from school in tears because she did not have a smartphone to use in class.

Celeste Lewis said she felt guilty after her daughter Ava's school, Whitchurch High in Cardiff, encouraged pupils to use their phones in lessons to do things like look up locations on Google Earth. […]

Ms Lewis said she began to feel "pressure" on parents to buy smartphones as her daughter left primary school, but decided not to over fears about how it might affect Ava's mental health.

"In Year 6 I'd say every single kid in her class had a smartphone except for her," said the charity worker.

Busy busy…

My ducks are brown….

@inscius @MummaBear Yes, basically.

Fedi help request from a friend, please tag anyone you think may be able to help.

Can anyone suggest an instance that would be suitable for a 15/16 year old boy who’s into digital art, gaming, and that kind of stuff?

I fear this is moon on a stick, as this side of Fedi isn’t really kid-safe on account of drive-by nazi / loli memes and the other side is… well, full of furries and TRAs.

(I know there is a lot of this stuff on Discord, but see above re: furries and TRAs.)

I’d worn a hole through the elbow of an otherwise-fine jumper, so I got out my trusty “speedweve” darning loom and patched it.

Slightly to my surprise, none of my sewing ladies had heard of a Lancashire darning loom, and there was much interest in seeing how it worked.

Photos: right side, wrong side, and the loom.

@djsumdog @sun I actually heard a young person recently say (out loud), completely naturally, that a “plant unalived itself”.

Well, I have now met my piece of wood. It is indeed a very nice piece of wood, but I could see that from the photos, so remain unclear why I had to drive half an hour each way on an utterly filthy day in order to see it in person.

Carpenters are weird.