Brad Macpherson

Middle-aged know-it-all and newly-minted Irishman. He/him, cis.
We must stop the perpetual-GDP-growth insanity, property hoarding, and churches' influence in public institutions. Build active travel routes, not more bloody highways, and #UBI now please.

Born at 336.13ppm CO2.
More biscuit than man.

Not my site but something I whole-heartedly support - https://www.stoproaddeaths.ie/

Sadly-necessary tags: #nobot #noindex #noarchive #nosearch #nobridge

Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/bradmacpherson
Daylight Savings: can piss right off
UBI: Now!

Public Key

npub13mqs0xct5pdnm5mrsqgwjpn36msxl5hghut6vp0pjxfj3m7zd5dqe87xxe

NIP-05 Address

brad_at_1040ste.net@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgasg8nv96qkea6d3cqy8fqecadcr06t5t79axqhseryegalpx6xspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds73jeqs

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub13mqs0xct5pdnm5mrsqgwjpn36msxl5hghut6vp0pjxfj3m7zd5dqe87xxe

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Last Notes

2026-04-09 06:50:08 UTC

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Manufacturing silicon PV panels isn't beyond our wit either. The majority of materials there are eminently reusable or recyclable, and pretty well none of them are especially rare.
A forward-looking government would invest in this capacity in Ireland rather than a white elephant like LNG "emergency" "strategic reserve" "totally not something we're using to siphon funds into our mates' pockets and lock in FF dependence for another generation" facilities.

2026-03-11 17:37:29 UTC

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https://1040ste.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/211/750/959/623/007/original/46ae4b8a47873168.png

2026-03-07 20:33:07 UTC

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I'm looking forward to getting my C64 - any day now! - and buying a copy of Rowan, btw ☺️

2026-03-07 20:31:29 UTC

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Hey, don't knock snarking as a force for good in the world 😂
Nah but seriously, and without blowing sunshine up your arse, you'd be surprised which and how much of your contributions to the world people value.
I would tend to think that as long as you're kind, and you do things that delight you, you will by default have left the place better than you found it. And that that is the loftiest ambition anyone should ever aim for. Leave the place better than you found it.

2026-03-07 20:23:49 UTC

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💔 That's rough - I can sympathise, it was around this (my) age my dad started showing signs of Lewey Body dementia. He had a history of alcoholism that cannot have helped him, nor the whole working at Wittenoom (asbestos mine) thing in his 20s. I don't share that history but by gum it sharpens your focus when you start getting to the age where your parents died or started to.

2026-02-28 09:25:23 UTC

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I'd dearly love to see the regimes' apparatchiks and bosses locked into windowless rooms, never to trouble our thoughts again, while we all get on with the work of helping their victims rebuild their bones and lives.
All the regimes - there's not a one of them involved that's worth a bucket of pigshit. And as always it's the ordinary people who suffer from these vainglorious egomaniacs and psychopaths.

2026-02-23 07:15:18 UTC

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Is that much of a change though? Going back 35 years I would be surprised if more than a fifth of my contemporaries had read books daily for pleasure. The article does bury in there that reading books in digital form is being counted separately, too.
It's very annoying when journalists publish press releases without providing statistical context like that.

2026-02-21 07:51:11 UTC

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That's what I'm wondering, if there is a shift away from inessentials or not.
I also wonder if there is a shift within essentials away from higher-cost-by-weight goods. That would be a rational response, all things being equal and from a certain point of view, which of course they never are.

2026-02-20 19:04:04 UTC

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I agree - so much of the economy is about confidence. Would it be fair to say the the mix of goods being bought isn't really changing?

2026-02-20 18:11:57 UTC

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In your opinion, how likely is that to be a positive or negative - not in terms of numerical +/-, but in terms of the economy delivering real benefit to people?
Buying less overall, providing needs are being met, would be a worthy goal - would you think basic needs are being met more or met less over the past 12 months? That is, have the things people are buying changed or is that relatively the same and it's just price inflation that's being reflected?

2026-02-13 07:07:39 UTC

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Not just poor Republicans bearing the brunt, all poor people. And most of the middle as well to lesser degrees. Unless you have money and foresight it is guaranteed to be a shitty time under the current US regime.

2026-02-11 20:59:21 UTC

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And in that best-case scenario; what do we do with our days?
Life doesn't have to be struggle, but it needs interest and purpose. If you have no problems what is there - conversely, if you have no problems, you'll have to invent some to stave off death from boredom 😂

2026-02-09 16:39:38 UTC

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I mean, if you want the archetype for fascist organisations, look no further than the various incarnations of Christianity (and pretty well all other religions, Abrahamic or not) through the ages propping up and justifying monarchies.
For every Quaker sect there's been ten Evangelist or Catholic sects busily putting people to the sword or sending missionaries to "spread the good news" (whether the unfortunate recipients want the "good news" or not).

2026-02-04 18:59:38 UTC

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In the US - or large pats of it, anyway - that's the pragmatic approach. In other places, Europe generally for instance, we don't need more cars. We desperately need to reduce numbers, weight, and size of cars, and continue to ramp up genuinely good and cheap public transport.
The US needs that just as much as us, of course, but it's a hell of a job trying to counter 200 years of Rugged Individualism and at least 100 years of intense propaganda 😂

2026-02-03 11:56:12 UTC

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Depending on where you are, sure. Not everyone's in a place with a good non-Google closed alternative, and the closed alternatives aren't exactly great long-term anyway.
People really into their cycling will find and use those alternatives. Civilians like me need (want) a better general-purpose tool that will help with multi-mode travel - walking, cycling, public transport, and also for driving.

2026-02-03 11:26:17 UTC

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The hell of it is, Google Maps is one of the best options of a limited menu of shite (a bit like political parties, amiright?). Which is why it's so important to push for and support e.g. OpenStreetMap to be improved.
Also https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116002605778465161
#note18ru…0yvd

2026-01-29 14:08:30 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115978465547350348
How about it, Ireland? Should we become the Ireland of disenshittification? I'm up for it!
(Read the thread, it's long but good.)
#note1aws…r0m3

2026-01-16 20:11:14 UTC

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Forming a critical mass of people willing to walk away from the whole structural oppression thing? I dream of that sometimes.

2026-01-10 09:11:21 UTC

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Any conclusions drawn about the value of safety nets? (I'll take any chance I can to shoehorn in a plug for #UBI 😊) Providing a floor for everyone, without upfront means testing, seems to me to be an obvious societal good.

2026-01-10 08:33:33 UTC

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The U.S. strikes me as the Byzantium to the UK's Holy Roman Empire, just over a much shorter time.

2026-01-08 14:31:20 UTC

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Is anyone else having flashbacks to the late 90s, when Windows users started getting access to the Internet en masse? When suddenly we went from a relatively savvy group of sysadmins running more-or-less secured systems, to a huge number of unsafe and insecure virus hosts?

2026-01-02 12:50:18 UTC

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Nothing wrong with that logic; what's the game you're working on?

2026-01-02 12:40:32 UTC

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Ah, my old friend, the C version of GOTO 20 😂

2025-12-17 13:23:16 UTC

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But that, at the same time, you deserve the money being spent on you. It's something alright.

2025-12-13 15:49:20 UTC

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Quite so - it's clear they take an interest. I'm interested in why they take an interest - is it unthinking conformity ("well, that's just what you _do_", almost as if it would be rude not to ask) or if there is an agenda behind it.
My assumption would be that it starts as simply being a norm to collect the data which are then used to shape the behaviour of "the algorithm". That then starts looking like an agenda is at play, whether naturally-arising or otherwise.

2025-12-13 13:27:59 UTC

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Why would anyone's gender be relevant on a site like LinkedIn? Like genuinely, what business is it of the site what gender or sex anyone is?

2025-12-11 06:25:44 UTC

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Secret investor courts aside (and that's a hell of an aside), CETA is a positive thing. Those secret anti-democratic courts, though... Talk about a curate's egg!

2025-12-10 10:52:03 UTC

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I always refer people to the excellent documentary, "Yes, Minister" - the episode titled "The Devil You Know".

2025-11-15 14:49:45 UTC

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Wow, reading the Wikipedia page is ... trippy. On the one hand, the teaching methods are interesting, particularly the more holistic approach to learning; on the other hand, holy crap there's a lot of nutty bullshit wrapped up there. As bad as the churches...

2025-11-15 14:39:42 UTC

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I'm one of the many who don't know what several of those words mean, and whose understanding of the different school types is sketchy at best 😁
Philosophy was something not really taught in my high school, it was the preserve of universities and the private schools, and what I have read since hasn't covered those particular areas.
Would Steiner and Waldorf have been influential in Germanic and Scandinavian countries?

2025-11-15 13:45:31 UTC

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Awful lot of awful people in that hierarchy were very interested in mysticism, though. Alongside the weirdos pretending they were Vikings you had numerologists and astrologers and symbologists and phrenologists, all sorts of people with broken minds and pseudo-scientific obsessions like that.

2025-11-15 13:33:42 UTC

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proto? That looks pretty full-bore Nazi to me! Not so much dog whistles as foghorns 🤣

2025-11-13 14:54:05 UTC

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One place education can help, in the longer run, is in teaching people about the flaws in capitalism; and how we can go about effecting change.
More directly though (and less prone to ideological problems) is teaching people how to analyse problems critically, and the value of doing so.

2025-11-06 12:07:32 UTC

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Crouch? You wildly overestimate my height, I'm shy of 6' 🤣 (About 180cm) The verandah's 3m up from the deck and 3m long, there's no lack of space there. I'll need a ladder for the top part of the framing.

2025-11-06 09:09:24 UTC

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No way - I just built the verandah 🤣
The upper floor is insulated internally, the lower floor is this year's (and next's) project; the verandah was last year's.
Not particularly worried about mice eating the insulation as it will be fully enclosed in studwork/brick wall/cladding. There's plenty of better food for them in the garden anyway.

2025-11-06 08:41:20 UTC

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Sheep's wool, on the outer part of the wall (beneath my verandah), with 4x2 (100mm depth) studwork and shiplap timber cladding.

2025-11-06 06:55:58 UTC

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Good job on getting the jab, it's worth creaminess 😊
Working, then to the library, followed by working, and taking delivery of wood to insulate the back wall of my house 👍

2025-11-04 21:29:23 UTC

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Reasons to be cheerful? Or to stock up on tinned food? I've not been following the news today.

2025-10-21 13:19:20 UTC

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Much-favoured by programmers, particularly those working on KDE itself 😂
Gnome or one of its variants is probably easier to get to grips with. If you have older hardware you could do worse than trying Xfce4.

2025-10-21 13:17:40 UTC

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Nerd time - it's KDE as it was the open-source substitute for CDE, the (proprietary) Common Desktop Environment.

2025-10-19 16:31:29 UTC

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Aside from the ones I already have - BBC Model B, Atari STs, VZ-300 - mine would be (least to most likely):
RS/6000
TRS-80
Atari VCS
Atari 800
Acorn Archimedes
BBC Master Compact
C64

2025-10-07 07:41:04 UTC

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It makes intuitive sense, we all have to eat after all. How does (some) people's reactions of disgust towards others' food play into that though?
I'm thinking of the stereotypical English "None o' that foreign muck", or my own queasiness about eating snails; or some Indians' sensible and well-founded (in my view - being lactose intolerant in Ireland of all places) dislike of the dairy smell many Westerners have, etc.
How to overcome those reactions while broadening horizons?

2025-09-30 11:09:07 UTC

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That's an interesting random fact - perhaps less than random in the context of where it was domesticated, and the current genocide being carried out in the region?

2025-09-30 06:05:11 UTC

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Possibly they're just meeting elsewhere than through meat-market websites?
Could the grocery aisle be making a comeback?

2025-08-11 05:13:10 UTC

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It's a joy to read about you helping people like this. I'd like to recommend the SystemRescueCD for any thumb drive or other disc-related work; you can burn it to a CD/DVD, or write it to a USB drive, and then reboot your system to run temporarily from the CD/thumb drive.
Caveat, it is a Linux system, with a welter of tools for fixing your system and investigating filesystem issues. If you are already a Linux user or have time to read up on it, it is perfect.
https://www.system-rescue.org/

2025-08-07 09:24:57 UTC

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18% of TDs vs 2% of the wider population (that 7% in the article headline relates to the increase in landlords).

2025-08-07 08:46:21 UTC

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What's the proportion of MPs who are landlords, compared with the general public?
Here in Ireland it's one thieving landlord bastard in six TDs, compared with about one in fifty of the general population.
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0808/1463905-landlord-figures/
https://www.thejournal.ie/irelands-population-reaches-7-million-for-first-time-since-the-19th-century-6750282-Jul2025/
https://www.thejournal.ie/who-are-landlord-tds-politicians-in-ireland-dail-landlowners-6636105-Mar2025/

2025-07-31 15:03:31 UTC

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Not all are; there are some exceedingly useful purposes for the compute power in DCs, but of course, anything used wholly or in large part for "AI" bullshit or crypto pyramid scams is a plain waste.
And of the DCs that are servicing worthwhile loads, there are far better ways to build and integrate them into towns and cities than we're managing at the moment.

2025-07-31 13:23:52 UTC

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That would be the reasonable and sane way to build datacentres; making use of "waste" heat in district heating for example. It's cheaper (financially) though to just evaporate the water and pretend that there's an endless supply.
About the only scenario I can imagine for this to be viable at scale would be photovoltaic-powered datacentres on former oil rigs using seawater to cool the machines.

2025-07-28 10:02:47 UTC

@npub1p09…m5vl By the way, ar.al is down (there's a link from small-web.org that's broken), is that permanent or a hiccough?

2025-07-27 23:09:19 UTC

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Oh fuck off, you utter cunt.

2025-06-21 16:36:07 UTC

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Ah now, that's not fair. Morons know no nationality - they walk among us all. Stupid Seppos are just in the habit of announcing their lack of familiarity with logic with a complete absence of humility, and often at the loudest possible volume, that's all.

2025-06-06 13:51:36 UTC

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Did another DIP meet its end today? I may or may not have slightly destroyed at least one IC using exactly this (and several more with general clumsiness).

2025-03-19 11:59:23 UTC

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Blacknight hosting are easy to move to, from AWS - as I discovered recently 🙂

2024-12-22 11:40:04 UTC

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The single most important thing Labour could do would be to recast the electoral system and ditch FPTP in favour of preferential voting/STV. It's not an ironclad guarantee against the far right but it does make unadulterated right-wing bastardry far less likely.
Coalition governments in Ireland have wrought progressive shifts, despite the major parties being mostly right-wing, that would have been near-unthinkable in a binary system without significant civil unrest.

2024-12-21 10:46:40 UTC

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"No." *slam*

2024-12-20 16:46:36 UTC

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More than 17 million in exterminations; to say nothing of 25-odd million who died fighting in the war; and millions of civilians.
Then there's the people who died of the inevitable famines and disease. Altogether nearly 3% of the Earth's population at the time.
Savaged Obliterated. Gone.
All because of the ideas used by these evil shitbags to con their way into power, and the cowardly obedience of civil servants in following ever more evil orders.

2024-12-07 18:08:44 UTC

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Is it that they imagine voters are as stupid as they are selfish, and they can use this grasping opportunist to Trojan Horse their way into power? (The horrifying prospect that they're probably right is best ignored in the interests of a decent night's sleep.)

2024-12-02 13:43:13 UTC

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Am I weird for thinking the real scandal is a rooftop carpark? Burying the carpark and covering the roof with photovoltaics and/or a food garden has to be a better use of space, surely.

2024-10-22 13:18:13 UTC

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Eh? It was wrong that police officers were tried after killing someone? Surely not, an open and thorough investigation of the circumstances around a public servant taking a life or lives in the line of duty, with consequences in the event of the public servant being found guilty of a crime, is a very good thing for any society.