Simon Brooke

Anarcho-syndicalist, autistic, crofter, cyclist, depressive, entrepreneur, geek, searchable, Zapatista. Politics & environment, especially #LandReform. he/him.

Twitter: [@simon_brooke](https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke )
GitHub: simon-brooke
FetLife: Simon_Brooke

Credo: Life is harsh. What we can do - and what we should do - is strive to make it less harsh for the people around us.

Addendum: you would not deliberately block a wheelchair ramp. Do not post images to social media without alt text.

Home Page: https://www.journeyman.cc/~simon/
Real World: Standingstone, Auchencairn, DG7 1RF, Scotland
Blog: https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/

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npub1rtc9e36k2rqy8e42ns364yg0klj2ym2yts42wnsk5tsv36vpyd2qdvmlvq

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simon_brooke_at_mastodon.scot@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsp4uzucat9pszru64fcga2jy8m0e9zd4z9c248fct29cxgaxqjx4qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds9wyr40

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Last Notes

2024-08-31 09:02:00

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I'd be interested to know your solution. My blog is currently build from Markdown using @yogthos' #Cryogen, and I have been thinking about automating it; but currently I'm too lazy to actually do it.
http://cryogenweb.org

2024-08-03 09:27:19

"the threshold of “well off” being those who have an income equivalent to roughly half that of a full time minimum wage job" – @npub1z3t…pqn2
#Austerity
#ScottishIndependence
https://commonweal.scot/the-devolution-deficit/

2024-07-31 12:47:16

"The more public an institution, the more vitally it needs to be running free software" – @npub167r…p2re
#OpenSource
#FreeAsInFreedom
#FreeSoftware
https://www.fsf.org/news/lets-not-celebrate-crowdstrike-lets-point-to-a-better-way

2024-07-31 05:55:52

"According to calculations by Oxfam, the wealth of billionaires has been growing so fast in recent years that maintaining it at a constant level would have required an annual tax of 12.8%. Trillions, in other words: enough to address global problems long written off as intractable" -- George Monbiot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/31/brazil-global-tax-billionaires-super-rich

2024-07-26 17:20:29

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fucking hell. How low is it possible for the US #Democrats to sink? Genocide is fine, provided you are "an ally, a partner, and a friend"?

2024-07-23 14:08:24

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coal mines kill small numbers of people all the time, and pollution from burning coal both leads to deaths from respiratory disease and contributes to the heating of the planet. But a coal mine accident in #Ukraine won't spread poison across northern Europe, or leave sheep grazed on Scottish hills unfit for human consumption for five years.
These are incommensurable risks. Yes, nuclear accidents are rare, and that's good; but when they happen, they have enormous consequences.

2024-07-23 13:53:35

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the point I'm making is that the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable, built to be unsinkable, and marketed as unsinkable. It was her captain's confidence in her unsinkability that led to her running at full speed in fog through a known iceberg area.
What she suffered was an incident which the careful, competent, professional engineers who designed her had not foreseen.
Have you ever written a body of code which was proof against all possible bugs?

2024-07-23 13:15:16

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what, like the Titanic, you mean?

2024-07-22 21:19:29

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There's trust left in the UK. It's still a civilised country, although that is declining.

2024-07-22 20:18:02

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No, it's suppression of voters who are eligible to and are enrolled to, vote, but who don't have any of the specific sorts of ID that the #Conservative party were confident that their voters would have.
People who aren't entitled to vote, aren't on the electoral roll.

2024-07-22 17:52:39

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in the UK, no one carries ID. There is no such thing. We carry driving licenses, if we drive, and passports, when we want to go abroad. But there is no ID card.

2024-07-22 15:43:25

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5. The law was framed explicitly to exclude forms of ID young people are likely to carry.
It was about #VoterSuppression, and nothing else.

2024-07-22 15:41:50

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speaking as a polling clerk:
1. We ALREADY checked each voter was on the electoral roll before issuing a ballot paper, as we have for over 100 years;
2. However, non-citizens are legally entitled to vote in some elections, so are entitled to register to vote;
3. The number of cases of personation in the UK is extremely small;
4. People in the UK do not require to have ID, and many, especially among the young and poor, do not have any;
>>>

2024-07-17 13:02:08

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I would wear that on a hoodie!

2024-06-19 22:25:30

According to the Sunday Times rich list, Rishi #Sunak and his wife have between them £651,000,000, up by £122,000,000 last year alone.
Approximately 3 million people in the UK use foodbanks.
So the Sunaks could afford to give EVERY SINGLE foodbank user £40 each out of income alone -- and he'd still have his full Prime Minister's salary and allowances to live on (and two rent-free houses to live in).
So why doesn't he?

2024-06-15 12:08:27

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and part of the answer is, #gift back. Not necessarily to the same people – if we develop a culture of generosity, everyone benefits. And almost whatever it is you do, you can afford to gift some of it. Got slack time? Find someone in your community who needs your skills, but can't afford them.
That's how we make the world better: step by step, where we are, with the skills we have.
#GiftEconomy

2024-06-15 07:50:26

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Most #OpenSource software is produced by software engineers and enthusiasts in their spare time as an act of curiosity, generosity, or social conscience: a contribution to making the world a (slightly) better place.
It is neither 'product' nor 'by-product' but conscious #gift -- and this is a good thing.
Viewing open source as something produced primarily by industry and academia is not merely wrong: it's missing the point entirely.
#GiftEconomy

2024-06-15 07:44:20

I'm beginning to make notes for an essay evaluating Margaret #Thatcher's historical legacy; it's my thesis that every single thing wrong with Britain today can be traced directly back to her.
Can anyone think of single thing which she did which has had, in the long term, beneficial consequences?
#UKPol

2024-06-13 18:55:20

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Note that what she accuses Soros of is supporting the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Behind the whole anti-#Trans campaign is a determination to return all women to 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche'.
Trans rights are the current battle ground in the wider struggle for womens' reproductive rights, and rights to engage in civil society at all. We must defend our Trans comrades.

2024-06-04 06:38:38

If you're saying that #Trans people cannot use lavatories of their legally assigned and recognised gender, you're essentially saying they cannot safely use lavatories in public places at all. Which means you're saying that they cannot travel, and cannot exist in the public realm. Which means you're also saying that that legal recognition is meaningless and worthless.
Trans people are our brothers and sisters, our comrades. Is this really the world we want to build for them?

2024-05-29 05:14:22

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I truly hope you are wrong about the EU.
I have no evidence that you are wrong, this is just hope. But yet more crises seems impossibly hard to cope with.

2024-05-29 05:06:02

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I also think we've run out of time.
By the time #Starmer has frittered away his first term in government (as he will) on 'steady as she goes, don't frighten the #Tories' policies, the world will have reached the point where even mitigating the #ClimateEmergency will have become an impossible, cliff edge cost; and at that point there will be no space left for people of good will to do anything but put their shoulder to the wheel in the task of saving the planet.

2024-05-29 05:00:48

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Voters will return, I think, and in very large numbers. I cannot see #Starmer's government being anything but a huge disappointment to voters in #Scotland.
But I think it will make no difference. The #SNP could win 80% of the vote in Scotland and Westminster would still not concede #ScottishIndependence; and, unless they can recruit much more able people, as long as the SNP seek to be in government in Scotland, they will never achieve that large a share of the vote. >>>

2024-05-29 04:37:37

Lesley Riddoch here arguing, essentially, that we all have to bite our tongues, haud oor whischt, and vote #SNP, because "they're the only parliamentary route to #ScottishIndependence. I count Lesley as a friend and as someone I greatly respect, but I think she's wrong here: there is no longer a parliamentary path to independence.
The Lesley Riddoch Podcast: Campaign Pains
Episode webpage: https://share.transistor.fm/s/981581dc
Media file: https://media.transistor.fm/981581dc/601cf266.mp3

2024-05-28 05:53:38

Destroying the planet we live on -- the only planet we can live on -- is of course totally legal and even supported and subsidised by governments around the world (including #Scotland's).
But PROTESTING against destroying the planet? That's illegal. That's very, very illegal. Don't even think about doing that.
#ClimateEmergency
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/alarm-as-german-climate-activists-charged-with-forming-a-criminal-organisation

2024-05-27 18:43:35

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so you're insisting that everyone else changes their software to match your preferences?
Think about that for a moment.
There is, for some of us, real merit in a system which encourages brevity.

2024-05-27 12:59:25

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I wrote about this three years ago. I really don't want to be proven right.
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2021-11-15-the-everyone-dies-event-class/

2024-05-23 05:06:33

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Is the solution not to tax the absolute fuck out of speculative profits in #housing, and spend the proceeds on building a shit-ton of new #SocialHousing rented at such low rates that it forces rental prices down in the private rental sector?
Subsidies just drive the speculative bubble higher. What we need to do -- everywhere in the world -- is destroy it.

2024-05-19 20:03:51

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Name one democratic constitution written in the past fifty years anywhere in the world which mandates a second chamber.

2024-05-19 19:52:46

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Or you could have no second chamber at all, like all modern democracies.

2024-05-19 14:12:07

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where in the world do you have an appointed legislative chamber that isn't corrupt? Ours includes many people who have simply bought their way in, including one who is the son of a very senior foreign spy from a hostile country, and others who are there simply because they were friends and/or sexual partners of former prime ministers.

2024-05-19 06:22:05

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they'll all have to go because there's no place for an appointed legislative chamber in a democracy. The whole institution is systematically corrupt.
#HouseOfLords
#AbolishTheHouseOfLords