<unnamed>

Public Key

npub1zjt9gsux04neazh04a9hd4400z9lqr5t9h8lnjl9rggs72aycmnssp6a2t

Profile Code

nprofile1qqspf9j5gwr86eu73th67jmk66hh3zlsp69jmnlee0j35yg09wjvdecprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntwt2vw2

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Last Notes

2026-08-13 08:11:02 CEST

- reply

sure, but teachers are employees. I fully accept that their renumeration should take into account the additional expense and limitation of their holidays being fixed. Indeed it should take into account the job they do. They are hopelessly underpaid. They are not in the same position as their students. If the kids think that they will get more out of time off, then that is, or should be, the kids choice

2026-08-12 18:32:44 CEST

- reply

I think that is true

2026-08-10 12:51:13 CEST

- reply

exactly, you have to hold onto that thought

2026-08-10 11:12:00 CEST

- reply

I am sorry about the drama. It can really shake you up. keep liking because it is so likeable

2026-08-09 11:05:12 CEST

- reply

yeah, they were doing well until the nonsense racism at the end there. As you point out a vast number of these so called 'foreigners' are absolutely the people who live in, work in and belong in London, especially the ones on welfare. There is a massive problem with the financialisation of land and housing making London housing a very attractive investment for speculators the world over. Airbnb adds to the problem. Not only does it reduce the supply of housing and decimate communities, it inflates the cost of rent and thus house prices.
Indeed, when you look at the whole thread it is just reform propoganda. It says that you are a home owning, car owning suburbanite Brit. You are getting nothing for your taxes and, worse, the state is interfering with your (airbnb) investments. Instead of calling for solidarity and the provision of public goods, like transport, health, education, sewage, waste disposal and housing, by public bodies for the benefit of all, it concludes that the state should back off except to prevent you having to compete with foreigners. The only call is to make Jack's mate alright again.

2026-08-04 11:46:05 CEST

- reply

what is glorious is people resisting the racist structures that would prefer them to die slowly in Morocco. Last I saw about 12,000 remain in Ceuta. If they end up back in Morocco, it is because we failed. Just like we failed with to respond to the Arab spring, the women, life, freedom protests, the Sudanese Revolution, the Great March of Return and I don't know what else.
If we don't learn solidarity soon, then we will have to conclude that we are in fact with Elon Musk and his racists. I would rather people were honest that they want fortified, leathal borders because they enjoy the benefits of global apartheid than kid themselves that they are anti-racist because they want a lucky few to be given a humanitarian visa.
Everyone who takes direct action against the border is a hero. I'm not brave enough to do so, but I can least give those who are my moral and practical support

2026-08-04 11:06:32 CEST

The response from the left to the glorious breach of Fortress Europe at Ceuta has upset me. Who cares if there is great political game? The people who moved are not pawns. They are agents. Perhaps they exploited a fault line in the ruling class. Good, let's pile into the breach they made and stop trying to repair it.
Donate to No Name Kitchen
https://donorbox.org/emergency-solidarity-with-ceuta
#Solidarity, #NoNameKitchen, #AbolishFrontex, #EndFortressEurope, #Migration, #Ceuta

2026-08-02 22:01:55 CEST

- reply

good point, well made

2026-08-01 13:54:38 CEST

- reply

This article, https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2026/07/22/the-liberal-capture-of-anarchism/, addresses the same issue but is looking for the cause of her revolutionary capitulation. It finds it in the university - NGO industrial complex. I suspect that is right. Not only are the universities and NGO's institutions of power, but the workers within them form the new working class, the precariat. They/we are unsurprisingly attracted to radical politics because they/we are now excluded from capital and are dependent on the wage. There is though a strong tendency to scab on the working class globally because previous generations of such adminstrators formed a priestly class and were rewarded for their loyalty to the owners of capital by being given access to things like home ownership and some of the surplus value that accrues to the owners of capital. The liberal wing of the establishment holds out the promise of restoring that.

2026-08-01 13:34:53 CEST

- reply

amazing

2026-08-01 12:43:32 CEST

Paul Demarty is always worth reading. I hadn't previously realised that the popular front/any one but Trump/Farage/Hard Right horror show has to ultimately prop up the liberal wing of the ruling class. I thought that it was because the revolutionaries have to suppress their revolutionary demands for unity with the more powerful ruling class block. It also, as the article points out, because the anyone but position poses no alternative to the way that power works. It thus inevitably leads to more of the same
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1596/sleaze-at-the-seaside/

2026-07-31 12:45:25 CEST

- reply

interesting, people want to move though. They don't need their Government's encouragement.
The people of Ceuta clearly need our solidarity too. 40,000 people in Europe or even Spain is nothing. It is less than half the capacity of the Camp Nou. It is a crazy number for a tiny enclave

2026-07-31 12:00:22 CEST

- reply

interesting, thank you. the Spanish government can tell themselves that. My guess is that the harraga are burning.
The Government is going to have to bring people to the peninsula, no?

2026-07-31 09:57:26 CEST

I am sure that people are becoming overwhelmed by all the requests for financial support from fediverse users in Gaza. I did some research:
There are about 250 campaigns listed on the Gaza Verified site. That is the bulk of our compañerxs in Gaza.
According to FediDB there are over a million monthly active users.
Back of an envelope stats:
Half the monthly active users have some spare money. Half of them believe in solidarity with people in Gaza. That gives 250,000 potential donors or
1000 fediverse users outside of Gaza per users inside Gaza.
Now, my friend Angham El-Khalil, https://www.chuffed.org/project/186653-urgent-assistance-for-angham, needs about $500/month to keep her family of four housed. I cannot see why we collectively cannot manage to keep her and all our friends in Gaza from being without basic needs.
What is required is that we put our money where our mouths are. The Gaza verified team could perhaps tweak their interface so that people can sign up, anonymously or otherwise, to commit to ongoing monthly support. It would prevent people having to beg all the time and give people a bit of stability.
Meanwhile, do please support Angham or anyone else who is in need.
#GazaVerified, #Solidarity, #Palestine, #Gaza

2026-07-31 09:26:57 CEST

40,000 people have made their way into Ceuta in the last few days. That is an extraordinary piece of direct action against borders. We need to find ways of building on that. I'm not sure what solidarity looks like here, but I am open to suggestions
#AbolishFrontex, #FreeMovement, #FortressEuope, #Migration, #Ceuta, #Spain

2026-07-31 08:56:29 CEST

- reply

I missed that nuance. Whoops

2026-07-30 23:05:49 CEST

- reply

I am sure someone posted one just the other day. It could have been a different telescope

2026-07-30 14:14:43 CEST

- reply

I agree that the choice is in fact spend 50k for a 50% chance of a million. It is just that you are, unusually, no worse off than the moment before the game started if you lose.
I disagree that you are always being offered good odds. See my comment about discount upthread

2026-07-30 11:06:09 CEST

- reply

all such a thought experiment shows is that not all pounds are created equal. There is a diminishing utility as the pounds increase. I think that the economists call it discount, no? Almost everybody flips if it is £1 or £1000 and almost nobody if it is one billion or one trillion.
Depending on your circumstances, the rate of discount changes and so the point at which the riskier outcome is less than twice as good as the safer changes. We are not so good at calculating discount but not taking the bet is a rational choice for many people, perhaps most. I do not know. You can do a lot with 50k
I am a home owner and have secure disability benefits. I reckon that if I put my mind to it, I could earn 50k. I think that I would flip. If I leave with nothing, my life is ok. If I leave with a million my life is transformed. That is more than twice as good.

2026-07-29 10:44:06 CEST

- reply

my respect for open source developers just went up several more notches. I sort of assumed that you didn't need to care about the hardware and anyway you used some sort of emulator/wizardry for testing.
It turns out, no. You actually shell out for hardware and try to make it work across multiple devices. I'm sat. Hats off

2026-07-29 09:19:10 CEST

So over 1000 people have been charged with illegal arrival. This is 'the crime' of reaching the UK without authorisation. The prosecution decisions are somewhat, a big cohort of boat drivers (expected given the Government's desire to equate the people who pilot the unseaworthy craft with smugglers), but also people who came by other routes, normally if they had previously tried, including by state sanctioned means, to come to the UK.
The judges, in general, have been sentencing people to under 12 months on a guilty plea, at least for those with no previous attempts to come here. This is crucial because you are only excluded from asylum if you get 12 months or more (nb. You still can't be deported if you would otherwise qualify but you are not given leave).
In response to the 'problem', the Government introduced a bunch of new offences, endangering life at sea can be commited by checking tide times, sharing safety information and so on. This will bring your sentence to over the refugee convention exclusion limit.
Why are they so keen to do this? Because it is meant to deter people from taking it the backroute. It obviously doesn't and they know that. What it does is makes these journeys more perilous and disproportionately criminilises the poorest and thus most vulnerable. It is predominantly black Africans who captain the boats because they can't afford a seat any other way.
The civil servants and politicians know all this, but they carry on regardless. It allows them to put out breathless press releases about smashing the gangs. It kills more people and leaves thousands of people in administrative limbo. The obvious conclusion is that their problem is neither the boats nor the deaths at sea, but the people.
As someone said yesterday, they don't want to stop the boats, you would do that by ending visas, they want to stop the people.
https://freemovement.org.uk/1000-people-convicted-for-illegal-arrival/
#UKPol, #Migration, #Refugees, #AbolishFrontex

2026-07-28 09:45:50 CEST

- reply

Of course, it is fine to have or be an authority in some situations, my house, my rules is totally acceptable. If you want to run a cafe, online space or club your way, go ahead. It makes sense. Here is my gay mens' bicycle club. There is no space for TERFs/kink shaming/soliciting donations for Gaza.... You do you. You don't need to have a non-hierachical bicycle club open to all. If the members don't like it, they can form their own club. Ditto for your fedi instance
If you generalise that to society, you end up with a problem. At best you have a juridified Human Resources department determining what is acceptable. At worse, you have those rules used to crush dissent.

2026-07-26 14:42:33 CEST

- reply

very, very possibly, yes. I have never heard of the original because I am an ignoramus

2026-07-23 09:42:12 CEST

- reply

I am sure that there are interconnections between the perpetrators. I also think that it is too convenient to think that it is a number of weirdo men over there, colluding with each other and egging each other on.
Take domestic violence and other forms of male abuse of their (our) partners. It follows well worn patterns. It can feel like their is a manual when you here enough accounts (despite being a man, my work trying to assist migrants with housing brings me into contact with a lot of women escaping abuse). Of course there is no secret network of wife beaters. It must be part of the patriarchy and thus part of all men.
Like you say Mme Pelicot is a hero

2026-07-15 23:54:34 CEST

- reply

there is that aspect. Someone else in thread pointed out that the whole senate used to be by appointment of the state governors. I didn't know that. It does feel a little aristocracy by the back door

2026-07-15 23:52:34 CEST

- reply

interesting. Do people not find it an odd way of appointing people to congress?

2026-07-15 23:36:40 CEST

- reply

thank you. That is really interesting. Is there an argument that the senate was designed as a check on popular democracy? Perhaps it still is in many ways given the cost of running a campaign for election

2026-07-15 23:28:57 CEST

- reply

I guess that falls under 'states' rights'

2026-07-12 11:22:49 CEST

I got mastodoned the other day. It made me smile. I was asking for help setting up grapheneos to minimise Google invasive behaviour. I made a throwaway comment about my first love, lineage. A kindly fellow, enquired why I had switched operating system. I explained that my school was enforcing use of outlook and Microsoft's authenticator. My new friend suggested that I change school.
My first thought was that this was a proper fediverse or FOSS baptism. I now think it is a bit deeper. Assuming the suggestion was sincere (and I think it was), I could see why it would be annoying. It is so unhelpful, so supercilious and so not to the point. On the other hand, it is just some guy (probably) with a very narrow focus. There is no hostility, just someone who doesn't know how to express solidarity with others in writing. It was kind, well meant and wrong.
It is easy to read the lack of solidarity as a put down, especially if you are of low status in that context, like I am, or low status in lots of contexts like any non-normative person. I do think that we have to try to see beyond the 'merely' linguistic before we judge interactions as put downs or exclusionary.
My friend probably thought that the suggestion was friendly, not supercilious at all. He (?) would change school because Microsoft are so terrible. To not speak up is to treat me as a special case. That would have been a real lack of solidarity and not just a failure to read the room.
#Fediverse, #Culture

2026-07-01 21:28:57 CEST

- reply

I have high hopes for Emilio Gay. He looks to have a solid technique and to understand his game. It was part of what I felt was wrong with the Stokes decision. Duckett and Gay looked well placed to make a game of it. It didn't seem helpful to Gay. I can see the logic. The win was a moonshot. Going for a 50 ball century from one of the top three wasn't crazy

2026-07-01 19:33:13 CEST

- reply

it is not that KP should or should not have been ditched. He shouldn't have been in my view. You pick your best players and you manage them. It is also not the case that anyone from Compton through to Rory Burns set the world on fire. The problem was that their opening partner was shot. That ramps up the pressure no end. They may have been pants regardless, of course.
Cook stayed way past his sell by date waiting for that one big score. It was no dignified exit.
PS: Morgan was described as being outside cricket by the ECB, if I recall. He was a pretty loan voice. Nothing to how the press and ECB had it in for Adil Rashid, but that is another story

2026-07-01 18:59:27 CEST

Things that annoy me but shouldn't: England cricket fans comparing Alistair Cook's departure to Ben Stokes' and complaining that Stokes' was attention seeking.
Cook dragged out his career long beyond his sell by date so that he get to 10,000 runs and beyond. He was backed in this by the ECB and most of the press because he wasn't bone fide genius Kevin Pieterson. He stymied the careers of many promising openers. It was an arrogant, self-serving disgrace. It went on for years.
Stokes said, 'I'm done' and made a silly mistake to open the batting and try to pinch hit his way to an unlikely victory. Within 24 hours of announcing his retirement he was gone. I don't begrudge him his one last shot at glory
#Stokes, #Cricket, #ECB, #KP, #AlistairCook

2026-07-01 16:45:55 CEST

- reply

I wouldn't either if I could avoid it. My school insists on using outlook online. You can't forward the emails. You can't even access them with POP3. All their other resources are behind a MS login. I'm stuck. It annoys me, but they won't redo their IT for me, I asked

2026-07-01 14:35:35 CEST

- reply

thank you. Can you point me to something that explains how to set that up

2026-07-01 14:33:47 CEST

- reply

it is, but I need MS authenticator. I preferred the grapheneos sandbox to micro G, but this could have been a mistake

2026-07-01 11:35:56 CEST

I installed GrapheneOS on my new to me pixel 8a phone. Does anyone want to explain to me how the sandbox for google services works? I tried reading the docs but they were too much for my tiny mind.
#AskFedi, #GrapheneOS
PS: I feel strangely sad to leave Lineage behind, but this is probably because I don't like the Google Logo with its terrifying friendly lettering that shows up at boot time. I do love what Graphene are doing

2026-06-28 13:07:28 CEST

Why do I feel more drunk (and am probably more drunk) in hot weather?
#AskFedi, #Alcohol, #Drink

2026-06-25 16:01:32 CEST

- reply

this is commitment but to what cause I know not

2026-06-19 10:03:56 CEST

- reply

no, no. I was just thinking what is the point? Why do we need any cryptocurrencies, let alone state run coins. It seems bonkers

2026-06-17 19:23:52 CEST

- reply

that is a sort of ludo right?

2026-06-17 19:22:01 CEST

- reply

it looks like I have a lot of research to do. Are Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan too complicated for beginners? I have played the former once and remember being confused by the rules but enjoying it

2026-06-10 09:24:45 CEST

- reply

It is also, and perhaps you make this point, deeply hypocritical. You don't get much more mediaeval than a pogrom

2026-06-07 19:32:29 CEST

- reply

while I accept that the attack in Golders Green was antisemitic, I think that we need to be careful about seeing any attack on Jews as Jews as antisemitism.
You might think that Hamas' attacks in October 23 were antisemitic, but it is not apparent on the surface. The argument would be something like this:
the only way you can justify such indiscriminate slaughter is if you think the victims are not worthy of life
To think that the victims are not worthy of life is to think that they are not fully human
You can think that of the Israelis if you think them Jews and consider Jews subhuman
Something like that might well be right. I am convinced that the Israeli destruction of Gaza and Lebanon, going as it does well beyond any plausible military objective, is racist for just that sort of reasoning.
But Israel is a Jewish state. However much I might despise it and wish that it had never been and will cease to be, it claims the right to act for me. The bulk of official Jewish organisations worldwide accept its legitimacy.
An attack on a synagogue for the liberation of Palestine is outrageous. It should be condemned not just tactically but morally. It will not liberate Palestine. It will not weaken Israel and it will likely kill people who support your cause. It can't be a legitimate target. Whatever you think of terror tactics, that sort of terrorism is unjustifiable. It is like blowing up a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie.
Of course we don't know why the guys shot up the Jews on bondi beach or that guy attacked the synagogue in Manchester. They may well have concluded that Jews controlled the world and needed to die. But assuming they did it to 'globalize the intifada', then the antisemitism is not apparent to me

2026-06-06 13:11:37 CEST

- reply

that sounds like the right approach to me

2026-06-02 21:36:09 CEST

- reply

right? It has to be worth the risk that Sam Neill has chosen that day to make his visit

2026-06-02 10:40:38 CEST

- reply

I do hope that you are right. I'm frustrated because I grew up in the autonomous left, anti-CJA, free party, Reclaim the Streets, Jubilee 2000, People's Global Action sort of thing. I saw that whole mutual aid and solidarity movement through itself behind Corbyn and get mangled. I think that it is just replicating the mistake with the Greens when we need to be building an internationalist anti neo-colonial movement.
You are certainly right that the reason the antisemitism stuff won't work is not Polanski's Judaism, but shifting attitudes to Israel. Ironically, unlike Corbyn who was and is consistently anti-imperialist and saw the US, UK and EU as the real oppressors, much of that shift is of the form that Starmer et al have been corrupted by those rich, powerful Jews.

2026-06-02 09:47:38 CEST

- reply

the Greens, unlike Momentum, are a proper political party. Unlike Labour, they don't have a hundred years of experience keeping the left under control.
I would still be surprised if the left surge managed to shift the party from the tories on bikes. There will be, and is, a lot of pressure from outside. We have already seen Polanski starting to crack. He should not have backed down about that murderer in Golders Green being kicked in the head by the cops.
The new members are politically naive and incoherent. My guess is they are largely pro-EU and pro-NATO. In other words, they are loyalists. They will go along with militarist defence, border controls and law and order nonsense. They will also get split when the right realise that you can't call a proud Jew an antisemite. The pivot will be 'they want to trans your kids'. That will do for the insurgency.

2026-05-29 22:58:26 CEST

- reply

I think that the first one was a bit more comprehensible to me. But maybe this is analogous to languages, if I have understood. They are ways of saying the same thing, but some of them are clearer depending on the task or just more intuitive to the programmer

2026-05-29 22:05:23 CEST

- reply

but why is that? I fear that if I have to ask it is because my understanding is so minimal. I never got beyond 10 PRINT "Hello World"; 20 GOTO 10
I don't mean why do cultures develop, but why can't you do the same thing in haskall?

2026-05-29 21:23:59 CEST

- reply

does that mean that it is just a matter of style as much as anything and different people finding different things intuitive or infuriating?

2026-05-29 21:01:47 CEST

Why are there so many different programming languages? Don't they all do the same thing in the end?
#AskFedi, #Confused

2026-05-28 17:56:26 CEST

- reply

all your content is golden. I really like it when you post stuff about your daily life

2026-05-28 13:17:16 CEST

- reply

what is the significance of the android layer please?

2026-05-28 12:25:38 CEST

- reply

right, in this country, the UK, we had the ruling class falling over themselves to condemn Huawei installing the 5g network, yet GCHQ intercept and store all of our internet traffic

2026-05-27 10:15:38 CEST

- reply

'ants a bit annoying'. This is heresy. We might need to block the whole freeradical server if they let this post stay up

2026-05-27 09:55:55 CEST

- reply

it is a niche fedi response, but one I heartily endorse. I fear the wider 'verse may take issue that the lawn is not a wild flower meadow and haven for bees, but that should not stop you

2026-05-27 09:06:07 CEST

عيد مبارك Happy Eid
Today is a very good day to help out someone in need in Gaza.
It is also a good day to repair some old clothes or some old electronics. It is an excellent day to tend a garden or go for a walk. I also recommend barbecuing the rich.
I think that just about covers all of the fediverse's favourite things.
https://gaza-verified.org/
#Gaza, #Palestine, #Fediverse, #RightToRepair, #BarbecueTheRich, #EidMubarak, #عيدمبارك

2026-05-16 11:43:43 CEST

Can we all agree that the fediverse has enough content explaining why LLMs are bad?
On a more serious note, I was filtering out anything containing 'AI' and this dramatically improved my feed. It also removed any post containing those two letters. This filtered out quite a lot of interesting stuff. It is particularly bad for French language content because writing 'j'ai...' is pretty common. How do I filter for 'AI' as a standalone word?
#feditips, #filters, #helpneeded

2026-05-08 12:23:18 CEST

- reply

I can think of nothing more thrilling :)

2026-05-08 12:07:32 CEST

- reply

the best resources for you are https://www.asaproject.org/
and Right to Remain: https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/
In short, if you arrive on the beach you will be put in a hostel, if you are lucky you get a room to yourself. if you are unlucky, you will be sharing. If you are really unlucky, you will be in a camp. You get meals but that is it. This is section 98 support. You should be signed up with a GP by Migrant Help. Children have a right to school. Charities might visit and sort out some clothes, shoes and a SIM card. Care for Calais do that a lot.
After 5/6 weeks, you will probably be in the same place but you will get £9.95/week for essentials. You might get relocated anywhere in the country into a shared house. You might have to share a room. You will then get £49.95/week. That is section 95.
You are not allowed to work. You do have a right to legal aid, but you have to find the lawyer. There are very few people doing legal aid work

2026-04-26 16:07:10 CEST

- reply

I guess that it is pleasant to blame the Jews for the racism and imperialism of the US and UK establishments, but I am sorry to tell you that they were at it long before Israel existed and will be at long after that evil regime has collapsed.
I will acknowledge that Netanyahu and the Israeli establishment are expert at leveraging their position in the US imperial project to further their own genocidal goals. It is a far cry from them using the imperial hegemon as a puppet

2026-04-01 12:25:57 CEST

- reply

they are the worst

2026-04-01 12:17:14 CEST

- reply

true, but better than a black range rover. 'Oh don't look at me. I bought a ludicrously expensive status symbol, but it's just so convenient for getting the kids to Tai Chi practice and nipping out to Waitrose for smoked salmon and crème fraîche.'
Just buy a Porsche. It is cheaper, more fun to drive and better reflective of your vapid life and empty soul. At least kids will get a thrill out of seeing your car

2026-03-31 22:25:18 CEST

- reply

can you explain this a bit more? I missed the original

2026-03-31 22:19:56 CEST

- reply

I guess, though I haven't followed either very closely, that the scandals are different. Clinton was unlawfully conducting government business from her private server. She then compounded it by deleting some (or all?) of the emails. Patel was stupid and got his private emails hacked. He has done nothing unlawful.
The real comparison to Clinton is Trump retaining government documents in his toilet in Mar a Lago. The comparator to Patel is perhaps Hunter Biden and his laptop. The hoohahs seem similar, but with the polarity of the commentators reversed.
Feel free to correct me on this one

2026-03-29 15:40:19 CEST

- reply

that is true, but those places are rightly blocked by the majority of instances because they exist to let people attack and harass other users.
The ban people for expressing views that may in fact entail exclusion of some out group moderation of the majority of the fediverse is what leads dot social to exclude Palestinians. Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is quite plausibly antisemitic. No one doing it really wants to exclude Jews for being Jews. If it upsets you, the response is to block the user yourself or engage with the 'antisemite' to point out the problem.
I do think that the TERFS are at best useful idiots for the hard right. At worse they are part of the hard right. I also think that there has to be space for people to have a different understanding of that.
I also understand that you might want not to have to deal with some particular set of views. That makes sense. Fortunately instances exist in which the moderators will block instances that do allow such discussion. I suspect babka blocks a lot of the plausibly antisemitic anti Zionism. What I don't want is for that moderation to be the default. It upsets me when I see it happening

2026-03-27 20:48:31 CET

- reply

you alright or just busy? Normally you greet the world earlier. Have a lovely Friday

2026-03-23 22:38:46 CET

- reply

maybe that is all I am saying. If so, like you say, it is not particularly deep.
I would add that there are times when you should engage with people who are in bad faith. This is not because you are trying to engage them, but because you are trying to engage the audience. Here in the UK there is still a knee jerk 'no platform' approach to Reform. They are hard right racists. They don't care about debate. They are not confused. They are terrifying bigots. They are also the most popular political party in the UK. Not only can we not no platform them, we look ridiculous when we try. Never engaging or screaming at them only helps them appeal to people who have not yet thought things through. We need to be smarter.

2026-03-23 19:22:56 CET

- reply

this is really interesting exchange. Here is an article from the Weekly Worker that chimes with Sofia's position:
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1571/rotten-to-the-very-core/
Interestingly the CPGB, who publish the paper, are also into sharp polemic, but piss off much of the rest of the hard left because they are so bloody rude. I find myself in agreement with them that it is only through critique that we learn and that demanding politeness or comradely conversation is often just a way of enforcing conformity and silencing dissent. I also think that there is a time and a place. As John Brown points out, you have to reach out to your fellow travellers, the unconverted and, at times, opponents. You can be tactical about when and polemic is appropriate.

2026-03-17 09:31:21 CET

- reply

your kindness, grace and DIY approach to server management are all inspirations to me. I am sure that those skills would be appreciated by some groups local to you

2026-03-16 22:22:57 CET

- reply

Ahhh thank you. This looks far to complicated for me

2026-03-16 10:55:33 CET

I love how many great photographers there are on mastodon. I guess some of them are on pixelfed too. I like that too.
(Maybe too many pictures of cats, but I have a filter for that)

2026-03-15 23:00:37 CET

Can Mastodon help? Our little charities wordpress keeps trying to send me a password reset link. What is going on it says that the reset request is coming from 222.167.186.247. What do I do?
#Wordpress, #HelpNeeded

2026-03-14 23:12:13 CET

- reply

after his unnecessary taunting of the crowd, it felt like that rare thing: karma

2026-03-14 22:13:24 CET

- reply

do they add the same stuff to gas the world over? I sort of hoped that gas smelt differently in different countries

2026-03-10 21:08:55 CET

- reply

I hope that you can find a way to mitigate it

2026-03-10 21:06:29 CET

- reply

I am sorry to hear that. Pain is the worst

2026-03-06 11:09:52 CET

- reply

I am down with the return of colour. Not that your misty pseudo monochrome shots were not wonderful, but I am hoping that it is a sign that you are feeling better about life

2026-03-05 18:28:45 CET

- reply

these are not the conditions to be granted asylum. That remains a well founded fear of persecution because of your race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group. These are the conditions to be granted indefinite leave to remain following a positive asylum decision.
https://freemovement.org.uk/home-secretary-makes-written-statement-on-coming-asylum-changes/

2026-03-05 08:46:44 CET

- reply

I think R is drinking the high end stuff. The cheap stuff is £14

2026-02-28 20:41:39 CET

- reply

sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here

2026-02-28 20:14:32 CET

I have been finding the 'war on Iran is a distraction from the Epstein files' hot take annoying. I think that this is why:
1. It centres US domestic politics
2. It ignores the fact that a huge part of the US establishment has been gunning for war in Iran for years. It is not a Trumpist development.
In short it pretends that the US is not a belligerent, imperialist project. What has happened is that the US has decided to drop the talking softly part and is quite prepared to use the full force of its military might to secure domination. It is terrifying but it has nothing to do with Epstein
#EpsteinFiles, #Iran, #NoWarButClassWar

2026-02-23 18:30:40 CET

- reply

couldn't happen to a nicer chap. I suppose that there is always Blair

2026-02-20 23:07:06 CET

- reply

cool, I'm glad that it continues. Good luck with moving the business

2026-02-20 11:15:01 CET

- reply

it is an instance that was set up by some popular podcaster. I had high hopes for it. There was a lot of buzz a while back when it opened. It occurred to me that I had not seen much beyond the initial flurry

2026-02-07 15:01:50 CET

all these people drooling over a picture of a child murdering goon and his family because he looks good in a tan suit is the problem. A subset of that problem is people being more upset about a derogatory racist image than the millions of people forcibly removed from their homes for being foreign.
We need a bit more of Jennicet Gutíerrez's energy and bit less of the solidarity with monsters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER9_M002aQY
#JennicetGutierrez, #USPol, #Racism, #NoDeportations

2026-02-01 16:10:58 CET

Calling all Brighton people with a soul. Thousand 4 1000, a community housing project for forced migrants, has an event on 21st February. Poetry, prose, food and music.
https://www.thousand4thousand.org.uk/events/
#Brighton, #Events, #Refugees, #Migration, #Homes
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/996/004/838/394/029/original/9f934d3f72141387.jpg

2026-01-28 11:48:49 CET

- reply

the right response, because I am being a bit silly. The real claim is not that you hate computers, not LLMs. It is that there is no consistent position in which you rail against LLMs but not the IT world more generally. Even this is strictly false, as we shall see. It is very influenced by this article:
https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/
It is maybe better to start at the other end though. First the counterexample. You once pointed out to me that LLMs are bad in a very specific way. They poison the web, by scraping sites, putting huge loads on servers and making it too expensive for the little guy to run their own site. That is a reason to hate LLMs that is unique to them, I think. It is also not a very deep objection to them and not what motivates much of the hatred.
People also like to claim that they hate the tech because it is useless, but that is bullshit. They don't do all they are cracked up to do, sure, but they do solve some problems. To use your example of tech allowing communication, they are good editors and translators. I use Deepl every day to write better French or to understand texts in languages I don't speak. I use speech-to-text software to write most of my stuff. This is improved dramatically by LLMs. They are good at summarising text, enough to allow for interactive natural language searches.
All of this feeds into what really upsets people about the tech. It is making jobs obsolete. This is what computers have been doing for ages. You used to have an army of highly skilled archivists and clerks to organise data and to do the searches. Now you have massive databases you can query from anywhere. The fear of the LLM is that it will do away with the database.
But it is not the job loss that really upsets people though, at least if they are not hypocrites. Where after all are the typists, the runners, the compositors, the typesetters, the legions of people in the sorting office? Done away with by computers. Where even are the artisans, the taylors, the book binders, the weavers? Outsourced to sweatshops in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Here we get back to Whittaker's article. This whole global system of exploitation and environmental destruction is dependent on the vast data processing and storage power of computers. Palantir doesn't exist because Peter Thiel is the Antichrist. Peter Thiel exists because he is the embodiment of what computers were built to do. The reason there is a PC in on every desk and smart phone in every pocket is that IT takes the logic of the production line and expands it into every aspect of our lives. We are all Charlie Chaplin, turning our spanner to the rhythm of the machine.
Chaplin perhaps thought that the modern world was redeemable because we could film it. You might think that it is redeemable because we can talk to each other across continents. I do think that what the opporbium to LLMs reveals is a deep anxiety with the computerisation of our modes of production and of our lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n9ESFJTnHs

2026-01-19 20:56:30 CET

- reply

they still are if you move fast enough

2026-01-06 20:47:22 CET

- reply

I need to learn how to use lists. That is next level mastodon skills

2025-12-16 23:01:17 CET

More help from clever people needed:
I am responsible for a small charities server. It is very out of date. With some help it has been updated to Debian Bullseye (I know, I know). With some struggle, I got our nextcloud instance up to 25 (I know, I know).
Updating to bookworm looks like it brings with it PHP8.2 which seems to be too advanced for Nextcloud 25. If that happens can I simply disable PHP8.2 with 'a2dismod PHP8.2' and enable PHP8.0 with 'a2enmod' or am I first going to have to find out how to install 8.0?
#HelpNeeded, #Debian, #Nextcloud, #PHP

2025-12-12 12:43:57 CET

You people are clever. Can you help? I recently set up a debian server on hetzner. I think that I made an error in creating the partitions because I appear to have run out of space on my home directory.
/dev/mapper/SERVERNAME--vg-root mounted at / has just 13G allocated to it and is full, whereas /dev/mapper/SERVERNAME--vg-srv mounted at /srv has basically the whole drive, 131G, and has 2.1MB on it. I get the impression that home directory is under the vg-root
If that is right, how can I expand the vg-root at the expense of vg-srv? If that is wrong, what do I need to do?
#Debian, #LVM, #HelpNeeded

2025-12-12 10:10:09 CET

- reply

this is a genuine question because I don't understand why we can't make the shift now. I happily accept that we currently need gas generators because of reasons to do with the grid even if they sit idle a lot of the time. That presumably increases the price of gas generation way above the price of gas itself. You have to cover your running costs for when the turbine is not spinning. But why then is my bid price not just elevated to effectively subsidise my running? Why does the grid now have to pay everyone that subsidy?

2025-11-29 21:41:25 CET

- reply

I am sure that you will enjoy 'Professional Foul' then. Stoppard could take ideas and make them human in a way that I can only wave at

2025-11-23 22:24:05 CET

- reply

they are all great pieces, but I cry without fail at the Gorecki. Do you know the Venetian Snares take on the Elgar?

2025-11-13 10:50:52 CET

I need advice. I would really like to create a single giant PDF from a bunch of smaller PDFs and I want it to have a load of bookmarks or a contents tab that lets me jump to the indexed page.
I foolishly thought that I could use okular for this. I have been dutifully bookmarking my smaller PDFs but it now appears that the bookmarks do not actually form part of the file. They are somehow stored elsewhere and when my particular instance of okular is loaded it has access to all of my bookmarks. I can't access them if I open my PDFs with a different instance or a different reader.
I would really like a way of exporting the bookmark file and importing it into a new document as a table of contents. Is that possible? If not, how do I start again to achieve my goal?
#Okular, #PDF, #FOSS, #HelpNeeded

2025-11-09 11:27:29 CET

You see a lot of hand wringing about social media and division and isolation. I think that the division and isolation are real but it puts the cart before the horse. We are divided and isolated because we have lost public space and public time. You can't afford to go out and be with people or even pursue solo delights, like walking, fishing, bird watching or what have you.
If we think about semi common land as places where you can be with others away from work it will include places like pubs and cafes, parks, forests, hills, clubs dedicated to games or shared interests. The costs of entering have increased. Transport is expensive, adequate gear costs, the drink or the cake is exorbitant. Many of these places require a critical mass of people to survive. There are less people with the time and the resources to maintain or participate in shared activities.
It becomes the preserve of the rich few. They in turn mark their enclosure by making it seem like possession of the right, hyper-expensive gear is a prerequisite of entry. You rarely see people out for a cycle in a pair of old trousers, a t-shirt and battered old bike these days. It's all lycra and carbonfibre.
We lack the time and the energy to do it even when we have the money. So we turn to youtube and social media to fill the lack, but the division will remain until we can get the boot off our faces by freeing up access to the common and the semi-common. Then we can be with each other again.
#Commons, #SocialMedia, #CapitalismIsKillingUs

2025-11-08 18:50:49 CET

- reply

it is amazing here in south Cambridge. It is so beautiful, it feels like the end of the world

2025-09-28 12:40:27 CEST

- reply

I am intrigued. Why might they have been good then, but not now? What has changed?

2025-09-21 10:15:07 CEST

- reply

not only that, no platforming people patently doesn't work. The far right are in power in the States, Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Argentina and India and probably elsewhere. They are the most popular party in the UK. They are on the rise in Germany and France. The centre traditional centre has swung hard right too.
No platforming is a tool to limit acceptable discourse. It was arguably useful about ten years ago when, at least here in the UK, there was a political consensus around social liberalism. You could dispossess, destroy, and drown people but you had to wrap it in a rainbow flag and take a knee. You could use that to try to marginalise the far right. Now that time is passed.
Good luck trying to silence fascists. You may as well tilt at a windmill. we need to build class based movements articulating a clear revolutionary programme. That will involve talking to people who have become tempted by fascism