catch

Drupal, improvised music, communism

Last Notes

2026-07-27 15:26:16 UTC

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alphabetical but with classical LPs split out because I don't have many and some should be listed by artist (multiple composers) but others would make more sense listed by composer, so fitting them in with the rest would be painful.

2026-06-01 21:15:39 UTC

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do you think every vote in the USA is counted equally towards the final result?

2026-06-01 21:06:27 UTC

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really wonder if people like this understand how first past the post and the electoral college even work.
Even if you think electoralism is good, you must understand on some level that millions of votes in every election make zero difference to the result.

2026-05-30 21:45:23 UTC

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Ah yes the classic riddle (stopping now but will remember this next time someone says the strawberry issue is fixed by the latest models or whatever).
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/665/708/214/382/990/original/560c30a45cb735a2.png

2026-05-30 21:40:27 UTC

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Monday (no)

2026-05-30 21:32:32 UTC

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Wow
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/665/661/125/754/444/original/9c293a49d5d41bb1.png

2026-05-14 06:19:11 UTC

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I'll raise you the seafood section in any Japanese supermarket. But then go to the cheese section in Japan and there is tasteless camembert, cheese squares. And those processed cheese triangles like dairylea.
There's a fish stall in our town centre a couple of days a week (that we use but not often enough) that has a much wider range than even the biggest supermarkets, so this has to be a deliberate decision on the part of the supermarkets.

2026-05-02 10:09:04 UTC

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been sticking to LLMs which doesn't cover video and audio but has the advantage of not including the word 'intelligence' anywhere.

2026-04-18 21:10:14 UTC

There's this thing where mainstream politicians demand that Nigel Farage kick racists out of Reform and it is so incredibly bad faith because clearly the party is founded on racism. They can't actually attack the party as racist in itself, because they're too busy implementing all its policies themselves. So there is this hyper focus on whether someone said a slur or not, while everyone apparently agrees that refugees should be kept in prison camps and catch dysentery and scabies.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/18/two-more-reform-local-election-candidates-accused-offensive-posts

2026-03-02 14:44:28 UTC

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a big reason for high costs is the way pricing works in periods of high demand - e.g. when gas stations can demand millions to turn on at all, and prices are determined by the highest unit cost of any supplier at the time. I think this is a UK specific policy reason and not inherent to anything.
Another thing is most of the UK's has storage has been decommissioned which means it's very vulnerable to gas spot prices whereas much of Europe stocks up when gas is cheaper etc.

2025-12-12 10:24:01 UTC

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Worse than I remembered. 'exposed' ffs
So the definition makes it so anyone who isn't monolingual English speaking has English as an 'additional' language. Including people for whom it's their main/first language or who are fluently bilingual in two or more languages.
Don't know exactly when this started but guess would be Michael Gove era.
https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/resources/guidance/classroom-guidance/what-is-eal-in-education/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/706/100/883/611/369/original/7cae35efbcf04ac4.jpeg

2025-12-12 10:21:15 UTC

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it's even worse than this because the official government statistics are designed to get this response.
We got a survey home from our daughter's school a few years ago and if you speak any language alongside English at home, that gets counted as 'English as an additonal language'. Our kids are bilingual English and Japanese but lived in the UK most of their lives so English is a bit stronger.
However on government statistics, 'English as an additonal language'. Will try to find a link.

2025-09-29 17:57:45 UTC

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my daughter's primary school (north Essex) has a library, but they also have a shelf or two of books in the classroom with reading practice books. So I wonder if the schools with no library have this - e.g. a small number of books to borrow in each classroom.
But that also makes me wonder what the promise means - are they funding 'a room with books in it' and does that include a librarian or at least admin time and ongoing funding to restock the books? Bet it doesn't.

2025-09-05 18:04:13 UTC

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it might not have felt like the right time to gloat about redirecting the march, but that was a great write up now that made me chuckle at least once. People need to hear stuff like this as much as possible because the tactics being opposed really haven't changed but they rely on constant churn of everyone else forgetting how bad they are.

2025-09-05 05:22:10 UTC

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ANSWER is closely linked to the Workers World Party (and PSL). Deirdre Griswold of the WWP went on a junket to Ethiopia and wrote glowingly about Mengistu in 1979. ANSWER figures were also members of the international committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic. Can dig up some links if it'd be useful.

2025-08-02 07:39:39 UTC

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I've been looking at meshtastic a bit but haven't got any gear, I live in a suburb at the bottom of a shallow valley so range is going to be 100m probably.
Just had a good look at meshcore after seeing this toot, it looks like:
No interoperability.
Meshcore clients aren't repeaters, only repeaters are repeaters. This has very different trade-offs to meshtastic.
Meshcore does message acknowledgement and generally a lot more around actually delivering messages.
More meshcore adoption in the UK/EU compared to the US.
MIT vs GPL licensing.
Looking at the map it has more nodes near me than meshtastic.
Not sure if this makes me more or less likely to try one of them out.

2024-11-19 10:42:27 UTC

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I don't think it is a meaningful prospect without the end of capitalism, but there is a lot of obvious energy usage (and not just energy) that is a complete waste.
Built in obsolescence of goods via cloud dependencies, lack of repairability, shoddy soldering/gluing/stitching etc.
Lack of cheap/free ways to share durable goods - cars, power tools etc. as well as general car dependency.
Badly insulated/built homes that require lots of energy to heat and cool instead of doing both passively.