Notices by Flick ?? (flick@spinster.xyz), page 3

@KeepTakingTheSoma So many utterly surprising news stories on so many topics lately! Truly, we are in an age of historic investigative journalism!

No shit, Sherlock.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14456643/Britains-Net-Zero-drive-families-poorer-Experts-say-decarbonisation-bid-blame-UKs-productivity-crisis-despite-business-chiefs-claim-83bn-boost-economy-year.html

A new report, by researchers at investment bank Peel Hunt, questioned whether Britain's decarbonisation efforts were to blame for the country's productivity crisis.

They found a 'clear link' between falling energy capacity and weak productivity in the UK, which has 'hurt economic performance and growth in living standards'.

A decline in UK electricity supply, which began in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in productivity growth, the research added.

The economists said their analysis challenges the Government's claim that there is no trade-off between Net Zero and economic growth.

3/6. Think this may be my favourite so far, it might well end up in the centre position.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @Lady_Penelope @HebrideanHecate It’s practical, too: the cows are dry, the chickens are off lay, we’ve eaten most of the meat that was slaughtered before winter (and that we haven’t will soon be rotten as the temperatures increase), hunting is out if you want decent stocks for the future, the vegetable stores are nearly bare: let’s make a virtue of necessity and call it a religious fast. That way the peasants won’t complain so much that they only have bread and thin gruel.

Here we go again… :(

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/03/mannheim-germany-suspected-attack-live/

A major police operation is taking place in the German city of Mannheim amid reports of a suspected car ramming. A car reportedly drove into a parade ground and hit a group of people, according to witnesses.

There are reports of multiple casualties.

Local police said a large-scale police operation was under way in the city centre, without giving further details.

https://archive.ph/qSPKr

(Long)

https://newsletter.carolinecriadoperez.com/p/witches-and-babies-and-dei-oh-my

During the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries birth control and non-procreative sex were literally demonised, and this took place in the context not only of population decline, but also a philosophical and political fixation on the connection between a country’s population size and its wealth. At the same time as witches were being hunted down, states also redefined what constituted a reproductive crime, with abortion and contraception now becoming officially criminalised. Meanwhile childbirth, previously almost exclusively the domain of women, now required a surveillance of a male doctor. By the beginning of the 17th century in France and England, writes Federici, “the first male midwives began to appear and, within a century, obstetrics has come almost entirely under state control.”

Alongside this state-sponsored reproductive terrorism came the increasing relegation of women to the home “in a way unknown in previous societies”, alongside the systematic devaluation of their labour. Reproductive work which previously had not been separated out from productive work, all of it being recognised as essential to the maintenance of family life, became officially non-work. Indeed, even when women did engage in market work at home, it was argued by public authorities that this too was not work.

@KeepTakingTheSoma I doubt the all-powerful ECHR would approve.

Believe it when I see it….

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/27/france-migrant-boats-bruno-retailleau-police-yvette-cooper/

Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, announced on Thursday that he is seeking a law change to allow migrants to be tackled out of boats in shallow water.

The rule change will also allow police to use their own boats for the first time to take on people smugglers carrying migrants to the UK in overloaded vessels.

French law currently prohibits police from tackling a migrant boat once it has entered the water, leaving officers only able to launch a rescue operation.

People smuggling gangs have begun using “taxi boats”, which remain in the water and collect migrants from beaches in Northern France, without setting foot on land.

The tactic allows smugglers to evade capture, forcing police to conduct rescue operations rather than arresting the perpetrators.

https://archive.ph/lYpqy

@HebrideanHecate This and the maternal mortality rate, it seems like there won’t be any women in the country in a decade or two.

“This latest awful incident is a continuation of the escalating threat posed by ADF militants in the country’s north east region. In 2014, the group intensified attacks in Beni territory in North Kivu province, and since then attacks have spread to the territories of Irumu and Mambasa in Ituri province, and now it’s affecting Lubero. In the last month alone, the group have killed more than 200 people in Baswagha chiefdom,” the charity said, citing a local news website.

They said that, in 2024, 355 people had been killed in DRC for their faith whilst an estimated 10,000 were internally displaced, which is ten times more than 2023.

“Houses have been looted and burnt, schools relocated, churches and health facilities closed, and several Christian villages have been abandoned altogether,” Open Door said.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-70-missing-people-found-34682991

At least 70 bodies have been found beheaded in a church with most having been held hostage.

The horrific discovery was made in an abandoned village in the DR Congo this Friday. The victims, reported to be hostages of the ADF rebels, were found in a Protestant church in Kasanga, where people had left after repeated attacks. […]

The ADF - Allied Defence Forces - are affiliated to ISIS and they are seen as the most deadly armed group in the region. […]

The dead in the church massacre are understood to be among the dozens of people who have been reported missing since last Wednesday in the village. Horrific details from local media have revealed that they were decapitated using machetes.

@Lady_Penelope Toby Young reckons it’s bollocks:

Why do I say it’s fishy? Well, making half the 114 staff redundant because Stonewall is no longer going to receive ~£166,000 a year from USAID only makes sense if its 114 staff are being paid, on average, £2,912 a year each (57 x 2,912 = ~166,000). So, the nasty orange man’s spiteful cuts to Stonewall’s funding must be an excuse, not the real reason for the redundancies.

This is the take from an informed critic of the organisation in a WhatsApp group I’m in:

They’re assuming (probably rightly) that all their staff are innumerate and they are using this as an excuse to make redundancies easier to sell. Better than saying “We’re shit, we’ve destroyed our brand, we can’t get a decent CEO, we can’t keep board members, experts are genuinely surprised that we managed to get our accounts signed off last year with a operating deficit of nearly a million” – and this way they get rid of dead weight, restructure and go cap in hand to the Government.

If any Stonewall employees are made redundant by the organisation for this bullshit reason they may have a case in the Employment Tribunal.

@inscius I’m not a huge shellfish fan, but given these things get up to 200kg I wonder what it would actually be like to eat. The size has to make a difference to the texture. Definitely in “carve a steak off” territory, rather than “swallow it whole”.

@KeepTakingTheSoma Did you have a good time?

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/106

Crops on a farm capture only about 3% of the available solar energy, much less than the 20%–25% captured by large solar arrays. Now a research team has used a theoretical model to explain efficiencies as high as 67% for photosynthesizing algae hosted by giant clams […]

Seeking efficient designs, Sweeney and colleagues looked to giant clams, which can grow to 4 feet across, thanks to symbiotic algae that produce some essential clam nutrients. The algae live in 100-µm-wide vertical columns within interior clam tissues that extend to the shell edges and receive sunlight through the shell opening. This light scatters through a layer of translucent cells at the surface and then descends through the algal columns where light is absorbed for photosynthesis.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @Dan_Ramos No, that one is real: I remember seeing the article.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/22/britains-new-blasphemy-laws-imperil-us-all/

The logic is perverse. Over recent years, we’ve seen religious hardliners menace those they accuse of blasphemy. The death threats clearly aren’t empty. Hatun Tash – an ex-Muslim and Christian preacher who could often be seen at Speakers’ Corner in her Charlie Hebdo t-shirt – has been stabbed and was the target of a foiled gun attack. The Batley teacher, whose name was posted online by Islamist activists and a local Muslim charity, remains in hiding almost four years on. And yet the state is effectively siding with his and Tash’s tormentors. Rather than go after those trying to terrorise and kill people for offending their religious sensibilities, police are now focussing their efforts on locking up the alleged blasphemers, in the hope this will calm the intolerant bigots down. It’s an exercise not just in censorship, but also victim-blaming.

Three kinds of mushrooms and mushroom pesto (which contains a further three kinds of mushroom). Very mushroom.

Ohhhhh: the sudden Welsh ban on greyhound racing now makes sense.

It turns out that the governing party needs one MS from another party to not vote against their budget in order for it to pass, and the sole LibDem has a bee in her bonnet about greyhound racing….

@polarisera Oh, I tend to be against it myself, but I had been intensely curious why Wales suddenly announced last week that they were banning it at top speed before the next election. Now I know.