Notices by Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK (vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de)

My friend @Dicksondavid in #Nigeria #Africa sent this picture of the sumo (not a Japanese wrestler, but a #water #pump). Alas, it has been vandalised and the pump head/tap #stolen, so the folk in the town need to raise funds to repair it and they are having to fetch water outside, from other sources..

#infrastructure

@dalias @acb it seems most of the time when a larger Fedi server shuts down, its not due to lack of interest - quite the opposite (usually the cost of keeping the server running and the work involved for the admin/security is too much). Fedi is quite resource intensive (particularly due to the constant demands for graphics heavy content, fairly high resolution pictures/videos)

folk on FB unironically posting the colourised version of this picture in a group "When #Briitain was great" 🤡

worst part of it is they aren't even taking the piss, they genuinely want to go back to days when a driver could get away with abandoning his #scrap #car in a poor area (and others could strip the vehicle in the street for whatever bits they wanted), as the Council didn't have the resources to trace it compared to today.. #environment #pollution

@HoustonDog @CStamp @persagen

the Fire Brigades in UK and Europe still turn out to cat rescues if the animal is stuck for 2-3 days (usually after a referral from animal protection charity) - partly to discourage untrained humans from attempting rescue (and getting into danger themselves), but they also treat the rescue as a training exercise and it counts towards training hours (so if nothing else is on fire, multiple appliances might turn up)

@piggo @yngmar soldering iron, that you heat up on a gas ring or even on coal fire (used for big heavy duty cables, and metalwork)

This was already starting to happen with #electronic / #dancemusic / #rave venues / events 20 years ago, but a lot of folk didn't stand up for those or even welcomed the clampdowns on noise/hedonism/drugs as ravers were (and are) seen as from lower socio-economic classes, now the #NeoPuritanism is affecting #bands and #guitar based #music

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04p27gkyd6o

@demiurg @billyjoebowers @flargh @pluralistic worst part of this is brakes (particularly ABS) are often already dependent on embedded systems but the standard of engineering is high for obvious reasons. But introducing "techbro" culture into this industry risks more subpar software and motorists being used as test resource as "code can always be updated online"

@Tharpa @TammyGentzel @bmacDonald94

we had elections in Britain this year, I saw one (1) political sign, very likely for the same reason. UK Motor insurers also discourage *all* stickers in or on cars (politics, religion, sportsball teams, even car-related stickers) and can load premiums if you have them as it makes the vehicle a target..

@SuperDicq @confusomu

interestingly just tried Copilot directly from MS365 in UK - asked it to write me a review in Dutch of a car (which it did fairly well, no worse than any other website), then asked it in English for the US election date and got the correct result (in English) - it seems there is some local restriction/regulation applied to Copilot in your area..

Only a small violin 🎻 for #Hollywood - the whole industry is always on the fiddle anyway - I do however have some sympathy
for workers who have been stitched up by greedy management who would rather destroy the industry than capitulate to the unions, but similar things happened in my country 30-40 years ago with similar results (the British creative industry is a shadow of what it used to be even in 90s/00s)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6er83ene6o

@Jaden3 @LunarLioness814 my late father was a great fan of Charley Pride, and always listened to him and Don Williams in the car. Sometimes he even wore a cowboy hat which he bought from a county show whilst driving (he was Malaysian Chinese, and the car was a 1970 Austin Mini van 😁 )

@Jaden3 @LunarLioness814

BTW this is what the van (his first car in 1978) looked like - except it wasn't as immaculate, had some rust, and he had all sorts of stickers on the back like was common in that era).

Compared to a USA truck it is tiny.

Dad did install a fairly decent Japanese radio cassette player to listen to his Country and Western with (you had to do that yourself, vehicles didn't come with their own built in radio back then!)

@LaNaehForaday @bmacDonald94 Every time I get in my car, I think of how many things I learned from my Dad, who was much more interested in cars than I ever was, but always drove safely and *never* showed road rage - even though he had long passed away by the time I finally got my driving licence (well into middle age) and most of the time I was in the front seat of the car with him was way back in late1970s when my age was in single figures and he had got his first car...

@LaNaehForaday @bmacDonald94 incidentally my dad also liked guns, had a few air pistols (anything else is hard to get a licence for over here) and collected all sorts of books about guns, military stuff etc. But he was always good to animals, never argued loudly with my mum, would help out other people who had migrated to UK from their home country and was totally against using violence other than in genuine self defence and these values have stayed with me..

@vkc @mattdm

some e-bikes are also appearing with various forms of DRM in their embedded controllers, and even for normal pushbikes there are a lot of proprietary components with planned obsolescence (particularly for the faster/higher end racing bicycles)

@RickiTarr we kicked out the conservatives here in Britain (even if the "Labour" party is still quite centrist, although the new Prime Minister has a similar background to Kamala Harris), and our neighbours in France had elections where it was feared fash would win but there was a pushback and they only ended up third in the end...

@flockofnazguls 50% of large/licenced stations still running isn't that bad, although most is "soft propaganda" from Beijing plus a fair number of religious stations. BBC recently reactivated two HF frequencies to transmit to Ukraine, and China and India are using DRM for higher quality audio for educational broadcasts in rural areas (makes sense given the large physical size to be covered). A few pirates still active too (although I haven't heard any yet)

@atomicpoet its genuinely difficult to judge whether this will happen, as commercial news sites have different methods of gaining revenue depending where in the world the viewer is (and in UK/Europe its often the case we can't view the site at all as some would rather block out Europeans than comply with the GDPR law)

A lot of these #fishermen voted for the #Conservatives and #Brexit and now they are moaning..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9r3kywqlkno

#Climate #activists and #TradeUnions are working together in #Scotland to prepare for a transition away from #oil and #gas production in the #NorthSea (they do not want to make the same mistakes and end up like the #coal miners did in 1980s!)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/01/north-sea-oil-transition-plan