Gavin Deichen

My impression is that Starmer thinks of himself as a pragmatist. The embodiment of this whole "adults in the room" bollocks that irritating centrists like to spout. All this McSweeney guy has to say to make Starmer put his instincts aside is that the latest compromise is *necessary*.

Love to do a 32 mile round trip in my diesel truck to visit the recycling centre.

Feels good to be green.

Eesh… that's a shame. That little owl has got so many people into learning a language, but it seems to end up almost being a hindrance in its current form.

Thanks, I'll take a look! 😊

It seems as though they've taken just the part of language learning that's easiest to gamify and left it at that 🤷🏻‍♂️

Someone on here did what appeared to be a pretty neat analysis of the fact the it's basically only able to take you to the lowest level of language proficiency.

Recognising more words in your chosen language is clearly going to be helpful, but as I understand it that's essentially all you get.

Discrimination is necessary and reasonable, but also disproportionate and impractical. Advice that's both horrible and useless - apart from making an unpleasant and possibly dangerous environment.

It's interesting to increasingly regularly see people pointing out that Duolingo is a terrible way to learn a language.

Could an app like that be tuned to be as addictive but do a better job of educating?

Does Brilliant pull it off, for example?

Look how hard the fossil fuel lobbyists are having to try.

We should take this as a positive sign.

You are truly the adult in the room. This is grown-up politics.

Sega ftw 😊

In my latest podcast I'm chatting to the Managing Director of 21 Degrees. He's got a beginner's guide to creating a comfortable home. Expect a bit of physics... but the good news we can do this! Andy explains how.

www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph383-a-beg...

#SelfBuild #Passivhaus #EcoHome

Do you trust the age verifiers with your personal data?

I know two people who gave up driving specifically because they realised that they couldn't reliably spot cyclists any more.

So there are probably loads more who don't realise that they haven't seen you.

Why do people who are really into cycling splash out on all-black outfits?

Why not be as visible as possible??

I have to wonder if centrist scolders realise that people on here saying they won't vote Labour are merely a litmus test of wider public opinion?

What would be interesting would be to openly not believe in it. I bet you could still sell various "cures". I guess that would still be unethical 🤷🏻‍♂️

The people making the big money out of this stuff have always been cynical con artists.

I honestly think that actually believing in it would be a barrier to success.

I've long said that, if I had no scruples, I'd be in "alt med" sector.

Even saying this here, I could still sell it.

Even publicly saying that I'd be lying if I suddenly pretended to believe in it, I could *still* still sell it.

If China play their cards right, they could become the primary global innovator in yet another field.

YouTube video by CIVIC SQUARE The Doughnut & The Built Environment - Centre For Alternative Technology (Machynlleth)

I think @immykaur.bsky.social sums it up pretty well in the introduction here - it's more about asking the difficult questions.

youtu.be/tG8POVZUDZ8?...

An irritating aspect of the "online safety act" is that we had the stupid EU cookies thing as an example of how not to improve the internet.

What should have happened there was a browser-based setting that passed on preferences to every site.

Something similar should have happened here.

It's so much easier to tear things down than to build them.

Perhaps spreading more of this research internationally will be good in the long run, but it's likely these actions will have kicked cures to some horrible illnesses into the long grass for the time being.

Lazy, complacent journalism.

This is tragic… there's so much potential in that research.

Are credit card companies hyper cautious because they fear being liable if a product / service is sold inappropriately?

Or do they see adult stuff as bad for business?

Or can anyone bully them into withdrawing their service from anything?

I'd love to understand the decision-making process.

And a nuclear one!

Nobody I've seen complaining about this is doing from a point of inconvenience. People are concerned that it will have a lasting effect on freedom of speech and access to information. Farage will shut up about it soon enough - it's to his benefit.

Aside from that, the way this has been implemented will make it commonplace for websites to request identity information. How many older people will hand over credit card details to dodgy websites? How many kids will be persuaded to scan their faces to gain access?

A lot of harm could be done.

There's a very real risk that the idea of what is "adult" content will include, for example, any mention of trans people (this has already been stripped from PSHE guidance), but allow any amount of far right bullshit, as long as everyone is clothed.