craignicol

Geek: techie, musical, political, etc. I build solutions, involving software and teams. He/him. Human rights mean nothing unless they're universal. European, despite Brexit. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Alt text: Profile pic: aurora ; banner pic: fireworks
pronouns: he/him (also answers to thon, or singular they, because they is singular)
Signal username: cannaescot.20
Political philosophy: Somewhere between Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett'

Public Key

npub1m0jlqp34pxgndjhaxjqtjracaz0jkgfdvs896waj55f0rejmhx4qrtlvpq

NIP-05 Address

craignicol_at_glasgow.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdhe0sqc6snyfket7nfq9ep7uw38etyykkgrja8we22yh3uedmn2spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsaujtg7

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1m0jlqp34pxgndjhaxjqtjracaz0jkgfdvs896waj55f0rejmhx4qrtlvpq

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Last Notes

2026-10-03 22:15:45 UTC

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it fascinates me that the "they won't work" argument persists when we have decades of evidence of people on guaranteed income (a pension) providing care, volunteering for democracy, looking after their local area, and plenty of other benefits to society; joined by people who have a salary and give up their other time to do the same.

2026-10-01 21:45:39 UTC

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meanwhile in Glasgow we have a rich history of merchants getting rich from the fast ships landing on Jamaica Street delivering tobacco, cotton, tea and sugar; and yet no-one asks "who grew it?" and "Why do so many of their descendants have Scottish surnames?". They even have the slogan "People Make Glasgow" with no irony.

2026-08-22 21:16:57 UTC

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slicing up and destroying rare books would be a good way to achieve that. Then they can move on to more common works.
Have they been eyeing up any publishers recently?

2026-08-20 22:25:03 UTC

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if *we* didn't build the giant blender then someone else would. It's just the inevitable march of technology.

2026-07-19 20:23:32 UTC

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and I'm sure it's just coincidence that this can be used to directly target the tribes that predate manifest destiny?

2026-07-13 20:18:57 UTC

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guerilla wind turbines!
https://files.glasgow.social/media_attachments/files/116/914/515/491/839/146/original/9267f993024934ac.mp4

2026-06-02 21:22:44 UTC

First they came for the trans people
Then they came for the disabled
(And to be clear, this week isn't the first time they've come for either group)
#UKPol
https://mastodon.scot/@andrewducker/116682053064512142

2026-05-24 12:14:36 UTC

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looking at the implosion though, there's a lot of data centres that won't be built (already been cancelled) ; a lot of data that's already been poisoned because there's slop in it ; a few tech companies whose reputations may never recover ; which means less training, less slop being generated, and if the funders pull out soon (especially for the oil-powered data centres) we may see a positive impact on carbon emissions this year.

2026-05-23 19:40:49 UTC

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and I'm on their survey programme, so getting asked how useful the results are.
Not at all good.
There's a damn good reason Google isn't my default search engine.

2026-05-08 20:20:30 UTC

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importantly it means for the first time the biggest party in 3 out of the 4 countries in the UK are the local independence parties who want to ditch England and reverse Brexit.

2026-04-26 14:57:19 UTC

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feels very much like the cities who didn't embrace cars who were going to be left behind, only to find that now those cities are so reliant on cars (and the price of oil) that they're fragile and unmaintainable.

2026-04-18 20:15:57 UTC

So, when's China going to announce the route to connect its high speed trains through to Europe and avoid the sea freight routes altogether, powered by solar panels, and completely cutting out USA

2026-04-13 20:47:51 UTC

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sci-fi show: tolerance is great; Nazis are bad
Confused Fans: how dare you get political on this hashtag!

2026-04-06 20:56:59 UTC

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she coined the term to remind everyone that the software running the show was just as important as the engineering that went into the rest of the mission.

2026-03-25 00:04:32 UTC

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read that again. 😉
It was Douglas Adams way of describing the liquid that came out of a vending machine calling itself Tea

2026-03-24 23:58:03 UTC

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powershell has aliases for a bunch of UNIX stuff that are almost but not completely unlike the originals.

2026-03-17 08:36:31 UTC

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there's two of them. Him and Netanyahu. All fighting all by themselves, building all those munitions. Following their own orders.

2026-03-08 21:22:38 UTC

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hang gardens, not flags

2026-03-08 10:59:42 UTC

When we hear about how the future isn't evenly distributed, many people will think about the luxuries of the rich filtering down to the poor, but few think about the tech surveillance in the poor and marginalised filtering up to others.
Black neighborhood trial surveillance technology, trans women trial gender essentialism that then polices feminist norms as a whole.
https://pca.st/episode/d0f25909-0e0e-4420-8784-4d4ff1e171f4

2026-02-22 18:51:02 UTC

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talking to the computer was never the problem. It was always asking humans what they actually want. Just look at timezones.

2026-01-28 11:30:05 UTC

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the randos argument seems to be "if you add randos to a signal chat, they'll be able to read your messages, so it's not secure" 🤦
When I get beef from the butcher it's not vegetarian 🤷

2026-01-21 21:04:37 UTC

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I've not read Mein Kampf but we did read the Nazi Manifesto at school (after we learned about the Holocaust)
I understand why people should read and digest, to understand propaganda and the ratchet of evil, but the manifesto is such a terrifying document that anyone who calls it a favourite definitely needs to be given a wide berth or a jail cell.

2026-01-21 09:38:24 UTC

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if it's not on a stock market, it doesn't exist?

2026-01-11 20:13:40 UTC

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I get, from a corporate perspective, why this is a good idea for businesses who want to scan and control documents centrally instead of trusting their employees (I'll save the corporate rant for later), but making this default on user machines by signing you up to Microsoft's corporate plan is user hostile

2026-01-11 18:31:44 UTC

https://files.glasgow.social/media_attachments/files/115/877/887/182/643/021/original/f51c0dd08ea5a8b4.jpg

2026-01-11 13:35:34 UTC

Interesting interview with @npub1fdr…lvhs and @npub1gnt…l82j which includes a bit around the 40m mark talking about using LLMs to cut out professional ethics - let the bosses fire the people who say no.
Which now makes me think every AI-first company is trying to be Boeing or Volkswagen.
Stay safe.
---
Better Offline podcast - CES 2026: Part Ten (Epilogue)
https://pca.st/episode/770caf98-2148-4852-84e2-630f2ce2107d

2026-01-09 20:07:34 UTC

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it's a hell of a lot easier to trust something that doesn't keep asking for a WiFi password like a toddler asking for a puppy.

2026-01-05 22:07:27 UTC

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microslop does highlight an affinity with micro transactions and micro aggressions. All those little annoyances everywhere you go that just make everything so much worse.

2026-01-03 22:24:10 UTC

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Indeed. It's a well worn sales tactic
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/350220/as-used-on-the-famous-nelson-mandela-by-mark-thomas/9780091909222

2026-01-03 22:20:47 UTC

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they don't have 2 million bodies, but they do have significantly more modern military hardware than Putin. Provided they've been well maintained and not hacked. I would imagine that was the one department that doge didn't touch.

2026-01-03 22:16:56 UTC

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I'm sure I heard a very similar quote from Ukraine as from that fighter 🤔

2026-01-03 18:09:10 UTC

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the Conservative Party in the UK are often referred to (even by themselves) as the Tories, which comes from an old Irish word meaning "thief" or "outlaw".
More countries should adopt that tradition.

2026-01-03 17:38:35 UTC

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see also "when did RATM get political" from conservatives who don't get the subtlety 🤔

2025-12-21 23:15:01 UTC

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I'm honestly surprised they've not been sued multiple times over by other USA companies about the impact of climate change. Whether ski resorts, anyone affected by drought or flooding or hurricanes.
They've got some powerful protection.

2025-12-21 17:10:21 UTC

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not just chose, there's documented examples of them actively hostile to the required change. Just see COP for some of the latest.

2025-11-29 19:16:08 UTC

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brought to you from the same school that gave us "we don't need maths, we've got Excel" which of course we all know has never been attributed to any errors.
Power without understanding is always a danger of great destruction.

2025-10-22 14:35:32 UTC

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they've valued your privacy at fractions of a penny for each of those partners. Valuing privacy is very different from respecting it.

2025-10-22 11:59:52 UTC

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see also, anyone complaining about protesters getting in their way.
Protests work. That's why we keep hearing about them in history class.
Also 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.' which is why a lot of people in a lot of countries without strikes are a lot less happy, and under a lot more surveillance.

2025-10-22 08:20:47 UTC

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don't TCS and JLR have the same parent? Certainly can't be helping TCS reputation. Don't they have a few UK public sector contracts too?

2025-10-21 20:06:24 UTC

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I get where you're coming from, but there's plenty of documented examples where neighbours stand up to stop immigration enforcement because they've welcomed the immigrants. I believe that the most pressure against immigration comes from the areas with fewest immigrants, because they don't see the benefit.
So government policy should be more immigrants in more places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenmure_Street_protests

2025-10-19 22:17:02 UTC

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be careful, someone started talking like that around 2000 years ago and they nailed him to a tree.
And even the people who claim to follow him keep trying to come up with exceptions "oh, but you didn't mean I had to be kind to Samaritans did you? Or the poor? Or the sick? Or the refugees?"

2025-10-08 22:23:03 UTC

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the maths of nuclear aren't looking great though. Getting more expensive as everything else gets cheaper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants

2025-10-08 21:31:53 UTC

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they're also trying to sell nuclear power as a solution. Because everyone knows that's as cheap as chips and has no known downsides.

2025-10-08 20:10:32 UTC

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slightly more nuanced take here. Fossil fuel emissions falling in China and India, it's USA and EU that are holding the world back because demand is surging.
Doesn't say how much is due to data centres but the numbers from Ireland are very heavily weighted to those.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po

2025-09-27 17:23:35 UTC

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we know powerful cross platform web applications are possible. For all the hate it gets, Electron is a great example of that. Apple is doing to the web what Microsoft did to WordPerfect (allegedly).

2025-09-14 20:37:48 UTC

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the kids edition sounds interesting. Especially as I'm starting to hear the kids figure out their steaming services are getting worse. I'll keep an eye out for that. Any kid friendly interviews on the topic you've done?

2025-09-03 20:18:44 UTC

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if raw milk was fine, no-one would have heard of Louis Pasteur

2025-09-03 07:55:22 UTC

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the fact that a number of unions have switched allegiance to other parties should have been a clue, as should the rotating door between Labour, business and the media, but 🤦‍♂️

2025-09-02 21:37:55 UTC

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those of us who were around for the birth of "New Labour" are unsurprised.
They've been untethered from their core for years

2025-09-02 21:13:06 UTC

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success 😀 a web page is easier to change than the BBC. But we can't expect an outlet that over-platforms fascists to care about human rights.

2025-08-25 13:51:16 UTC

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BBC is an odd beast in that light. They've got a transgender character on Doctor Who on prime time TV whilst their news reports are out of step with many who work there, not just on LGBTQ+ reporting.
I'm assuming Coraline Ada Ehmke knew what she was doing when she created it. I remember the fights she had at the time.

2025-08-23 18:11:16 UTC

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and if you haven't got one, this is a good place to start. Unsurprisingly they'd already included gender identity as protected. https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

2025-08-17 09:45:49 UTC

So Trump made another ass of a deal?

2025-08-15 06:50:07 UTC

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don't want the Colonists to feel bad when they start building their own homes there 🤮🤬

2025-08-15 06:08:48 UTC

Israel is making NGO access in Gaza conditional on their silence over its genocide
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/08/14/israel-ngo-gaza/

2025-08-13 05:48:33 UTC

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definitely agree, but at the same time those smaller distributed sites (especially the queer furry art) are being pushed out, by law in UK and Australia, or by payment providers and advertisers in the USA. So even opting out isn't enough, protecting the distributed sites is a matter of resistance.

2025-07-23 20:50:29 UTC

Ich habe Deutsch Freunde hier. @npub1fdr…lvhs braucht dich.
Kickstarter ist hier: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie
Pluralistic: How my DRM-free principles left me owning the rights to a German audiobook (21 Jul 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/21/martin-mensch/#horbuch

2025-06-15 21:27:44 UTC

@npub17xv…r4a8 @npub1fdr…lvhs does "fuck you Donald Trump... I'm not your bitch, I guess I'm Unamerican" count?
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Amc9UAAy-NM

2025-06-10 22:38:05 UTC

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if it's that efficient, how is he still losing money on the $200 tier?

2025-06-06 17:43:25 UTC

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it's particularly interesting in the case of public transport. And I'd be surprised if it's UK only.
We don't expect much use of public transport because people on this route currently use cars. That's because they don't have a choice. In London it's easy to find people who don't have cars because they don't need them.

2025-05-30 09:59:22 UTC

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Terry Pratchett's office is still my WFH goal

2025-05-03 21:06:26 UTC

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is it just UK at the moment? Would that suggest someone in the UK is upset with them?
(Mind you, I'm not sure if USA has the infrastructure right now to report anything)

2025-05-03 19:46:47 UTC

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I had a civics teacher in high school that put it well:
If you care about healthcare, you care about politics.
If you care about war and peace, you care about politics.
If you care about education, you care about politics.
If you care about privacy, you care about politics.
If you care about equality, you care about politics.
(There was about 20 minutes worth of examples, before he told us to go vote as if our lives depended on it.)

2025-04-13 19:15:05 UTC

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as a former academic, who knows a few current ones, I don't think any will shed a tear if the middlemen went out of business. Get a funding model that doesn't rely on citations inside a walled garden.

2025-04-13 19:11:15 UTC

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the academics aren't driven by profit motive (well, not the ones still doing the research - the ones who'll happily sidestep profit if someone else wants knowledge)

2025-04-13 16:58:32 UTC

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academics definitely share more of their ideas than billionaires share their money

2025-04-12 20:59:29 UTC

DOGE is the perfect demonstration of why giving the government a backdoor to anything is a bad idea, because security today has to take account of threats tomorrow.

2025-03-04 22:23:30 UTC

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given the way the USA has been going, maybe a big hard slap around the face *is* Him doing something.

2025-03-02 22:26:59 UTC

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something like this? https://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet/samples.html
(Or, of course, Conway's Game Of Life)

2025-02-22 21:35:26 UTC

Fuck. Right. Off.
Scottish Labour would set up Musk-style ‘Doge’ department, says Sarwar
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/21/scottish-labour-would-set-up-musk-style-doge-department-says-sarwar

2025-02-10 21:45:38 UTC

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fascism breeds in despair

2025-02-08 21:35:43 UTC

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A Man
https://files.glasgow.social/media_attachments/files/113/970/416/322/981/722/original/423e96ffba60cc8f.png

2025-02-08 21:27:18 UTC

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Bea Wolf
https://files.glasgow.social/media_attachments/files/113/970/383/177/875/018/original/8da40bbd70fab1e2.png

2025-02-05 22:15:39 UTC

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let me introduce you to Chrome...

2025-01-23 20:43:05 UTC

When Chile fell to a dictator, a group of workers thousands of miles away realised they could dramatically impair his attacks on the populace by refusing to fix the planes he was using.
Today, it's not planes, but there's still a lot of workers needing to maintain the infrastructure.
Nae Pasaran - Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_Pasaran

2025-01-23 10:19:57 UTC

Musk isn't a Nazi because he made that salute. He made that salute because he's a Nazi.
He cites The Great Replacement Theory. The Black workers in Tesla factories work in "The Plantation". He openly supports fascists and fascist parties across Europe.
He's Joseph Goebbels

2025-01-11 23:06:20 UTC

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is cookie consent a dark pattern? (EU guidance is that rejecting cookies should be the same number of clicks or fewer than accepting)
https://files.glasgow.social/media_attachments/files/113/812/212/385/819/765/original/092e6fa0e122ae56.png

2024-11-24 22:48:40 UTC

Of course it's not too late to do something about climate change. If it was, do you think the oil companies would be fighting this hard?

2024-11-23 21:58:53 UTC

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he's definitely a good egg. Love the "what *will* your name be" from him in person here https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/08/06/terry-pratchett-trans-ally-discworld/
That's how to be a beacon in the world.

2024-11-18 14:02:15 UTC

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lots of big tech, several news organisations, and the UK government. All well known for putting people and privacy first and operating in honest and transparent ways 🤔

2024-10-20 16:09:06 UTC

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so, why didn't artists go to threads, given it's an adjunct to Instagram which is an inherently visual platform?
(And yes, I'm aware there are non-visual artists, but there's also mutual benefit where artists of all types can boost each other)

2024-09-24 22:01:23 UTC

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we had one. Compared to the competition it had a solid office suite. Definitely not a gaming machine. And I would not have predicted the man behind the company would go on to front The Apprentice.

2024-09-19 08:30:46 UTC

Hey techbros, have you ever heard of consent?
"Oh but our business won't be profitable unless we can steal" that's not a business, that's a crime syndicate.
https://mastodon.social/@Richr/113163141759820812

2024-09-08 13:17:30 UTC

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I just hit the reply button 😁
But in this context, the @ symbol followed by an identifier is sufficient context for the parser to understand I was referring to a person and to link it appropriately. If I'd just typed Edent@mastodon.social I wouldn't expect it to be linked because a leading @ is part of the syntax for this service.

2024-09-08 13:11:25 UTC

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except all of those have been policy in various ways for the last 20 years - shifting power to GPs and pharmacies in the community, providing online services, and big "eat healthy, do more exercise, stop smoking" campaigns.
So what's he going to do differently?

2024-09-08 13:06:32 UTC

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the bug is auto linking URLs. If I want it linked, there's syntax for that.

2024-08-04 20:47:49 UTC

Human rights have to be universal. If you have rights only because you're a man, or only because you're straight, only because you're white, only because you're not Jewish, or Muslim, then those aren't human rights.
Human rights are universal or nowt.
#TransRightsAreHumanRights

2024-08-04 20:45:13 UTC

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the moon landings weren't in service of capital though, they were just a game of one-upmanship with the USSR for a different goal than "who can kill the most soldiers".

2024-08-04 20:42:26 UTC

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which is crazy because the biggest achievements the USA pulled off were public projects - New Deal, Moon Landings, ARPANET - so it's clear they're capable of it, with the right leadership.