Benjamin Southworth

UK ‘brain drain’: Farage is playing both sides | Good Law Project Nigel Farage took £40,000 to speak at a conference helping wealthy people gain citizenship abroad. Now he’s stoking fears that entrepreneurs are ‘fleeing all over the world’.

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Nigel Farage took £40,000 to speak at a conference helping wealthy people gain citizenship abroad. Now he’s stoking fears that entrepreneurs are “fleeing all over the world”.
goodlaw.social/j8qk

Officials stunned after air quality data reveals breakthrough in hardest-hit areas — here's how it happened British residents can breathe a little easier — Reuters reported that the U.K.'s emissions fell 4% in 2024, according to provisional government data.

UK: "Since the 1990s, their decline in emissions has now reached 54%.... the coal plant closings made Britain the first G7 country to stop using the dirty fuel." www.thecooldown.com/green-busine...

Our view on digital sovereignty A thought leadership article by Mike Bracken MBE on Public Digital's view on digital sovereignty

A much needed reflection on digital sovereignty by Mike Bracken public.digital/pd-insights/...

A bar graph depicting temperature change in Honolulu from 1883 to 2024, relative to the average from 1961-2010. The graph shows fluctuations in temperature before the 1970s, with colors ranging from deep blue (cooler temperatures) to red (warmer temperatures), with a rapid increase in temperature in the last 40 years.

On #ShowYourStripes day, notice that even the most remote population center in the world is experiencing rapid warming due to our use of fossil fuels.

Show me your stripes with this tool from @edhawkins.org.

showyourstripes.info

Are you TOO HOT? Read Web Curios - it won't make the slightest bit of difference to your temperature, but there is bound to be at least one thing in this week's edition that's interesting enough to distract you from your incessant whinging about the weather: webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-20...

Academia is not without it's faults, but Harvard standing up to trump is critical.

Luckily he won't be around long enough to do any real damage, no matter how hard he tries.

The government is slow for a reason.

Because it tends to elect the nutters.

The sooner he is gone, the better.

Friday! Lunchtime! Web Curios will be on holiday next week so CRAM IN THE LINKS WHILE YOU CAN! All the internet you'll need to see you through what looks set to be a typically-grey bank holiday weekend - it doesn't rain online, and so online is BETTER! Share & enjoy!: webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-23...

@fesshole.bsky.social thought you may enjoy this.

I've been avoiding the socials, because, well they rot your mind and put holes in your soul.

However, I do hope you are all rather wonderful.

A deserved plug for a very talented friend - @betarish.bsky.social's latest pamphlet is funny, sharp, occasionally poignant and a brilliant caricature of, well, probably most of us: www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

Yep..There's A LOT of people using "AI" as free therapy.

Beautiful. I have visions of Nonna's howling over a ragu salted with tears.

We now have 3,500 co-op members.

Each one a co-owner of Subvert.

Radio4 is talking about the cost of care homes. Gosh.

Had rather wonderfully hidden some chocolate hobnobs in the bookcase. Sat down with a cup of tea and wishing for biscuits when my eye alights on the treasure. Magic.

Anyway, great pints, good honest brewery, it is hackney, up to you, but every bit of London is a cultural cliche and that's never been interesting actually so fuck off. 8/10

But it really feels like we're losing the brains, and we're hurting the grafters. What's left? The bankers? Didn't farage work in finance?

No, my father was not a toolmaker.

Some how this pub always gives me hope. It is theatre without pretence. What does this country look like if it did the same. Remove the pomp and circumstance and get back to the ground and the graft?

Where does that leave us? Entrepreneurs leave, companies are delisting - rather hilariously using the same rules that were meant to make listing easier - on the LSE..

Given we've decided that cultural capital should be the reserve of those with the bank of mum and dad.

So, talent follows money, the money is better elsewhere, so ergo, we lose a lot of financially valuable intellectual capital.

My prediction is the economic situation is so dire that labour can't unfuck it. The momentum is too great. External incentives are too high.

I say this because we are actually a bit, if not, very much in the shit in the UK.

I strongly suggest you organise, and think about taking control, legally, of your labour and skills.

I'd advocate either very robust companies that will succeed despite or self employment.

Of all the pubs I know, or at least remember, then The Pembury Arms has nailed the brew pub ideal.

There is a naturalism to it that brewdog wishes it had. Punk doesn't scale, nor should it, but craft and care does.

Folk, it was always about folk.

#joinaunion

A two panel comic strip. Panel 1: A light gray human shape (like a thicc stick figure) labelled "THE WEALTHY ELITE" reaches greedily, mouth open in excitement, towards a large floating yellow ball that is labelled "A SECOND GILDED AGE" Panel 2: same as above, but behind the gray figure (who now has a sweat drop to indicate nervousness on its head) is a VERY large pink blob labelled "THE RETURN OF OUTLAW FOLL HEROES" with one arm wrapped around the gray figure, expression quietly threatening

Please tell me who first posted this so I can properly credit, bc it made me laugh hard this morning

The Tragedy of Stafford Beer SIGMA Moves

kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-traged...

This chap was totally unknown to me, but he seems very much my kinda of dude.

50% of final energy use is for heat. Most of it is based on burning fossil fuels.

At the same time there is an abundance of heat in the water, ground and air, several times more than what we need.

Heat pumps can harvest, compress and transport that heat to where we need it.

Let’s use them!

A projection of the world by Athelstan Spilhaus where he sliced up the land so that the ocean is shown as one, with Antarctica in the middle.

It's “ocean”, not “oceans”. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.