Compared with the climate emergency, genocide, inequality, corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and sustained racist, homophobic, misogynist and transphobic attacks, the internet is just a sideshow. But the internet ...is the communications medium we will use to organise to save our species and planet from their imminent eradication. We can’t win these fights without a free, fair and open internet. [introduction]

Audiobook, read (with vigour and enthusiasm) by the author. Doctorow's foundational argument is something most internet users will agree with: that big internet sites, such as Facebook, Amazon, and the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter, have become much less usable and user-friendly over recent years. (I would add Del.icio.us, Vinted, Goodreads, LiveJournal...)

 I belong to two Civil War reenactment groups.  The Norfolke Trayned Bandes and Little Woodham.

The Norfolks have a strong connection to Bullace Farm and many of them spend a week there every year as volunteers.  This year, the volunteers from LIttle Woodham are visiting the farm for a day.

I really really want to be there, but it's a three hour trip on a mini bus, and three hours back again.  And I'm paranoid about long journeys.  I've had three really bad (lasting more than two months) of sciatica in the last few years, and two of them were triggered by long journeys.

If you've ever had sciatica, you'll know just how painful it is.  If you haven't, all I can tell you is that it's the most painful health condition I've had in my life and it can leave you pretty much immobilised for the duration.

The last bad attack was triggered by a long train journey.   I chose train rather than car, as I knew I'd be able to get up and walk round at intervals, but sadly, even that and doing tai chi at stations when there were changes, wasn't enough.

By the time I got home I was in agony.  My husband picked me up at the station, and I didn't do any journeys after that for quite some time. Even the short distance to physio appointments had to be done lying on the back seat of the car.  Sitting upright was't an option, even for five minutes.

Over the next couple of months, I worked my way through three different physios who all agreed that I needed an operation (to be fair, my original bout of sciatica a few years before HAD needed an operation), until, finally, Manfred came back to England (he has an elderly parent in the Netherlands).  I walked in with all my weight on my walking stick, and walked out without the stick.

Took a couple of weeks to finish off the job, but that man is a miracle worker.  (He correctly identified the cause of my previous bout of sciatica, as well.)

Ah well, to cut a long story short, I shall not go to Bullace Farm, even though  I madly want to.

If you want to know what the farm is like, watch Tales From the Green Valley.

It always surprises me that Boots isn't open until 9am. You would have thought that there'd be enough people wanting to pick up painkillers or similar on the way in to work.

a keynote talk by one of the world’s leading scholars of 14th-century music, Anne Stone (CUNY Graduate Center), performances of pieces in several of the genres represented in Machaut’s oeuvre, and a sing-along of the Kyrie from the Messe de Nostre Dame.

• A Velvet Chair Anywhere but Home by Brianna Alers
• The Shape of You by Dana Wall
• The Heretic • by Jeff Gard

• So the Epstein scandal is about politics? Silly me for thinking it’s about the mass abuse of women and girls by Marina Hyde
• The Dragon Caught in the Poem by Mari Ness
• Carbon Dysphoria by Iris Meredith
• Starlink Is Dropping From the Sky Again and Again. Scientists Warn Earth Is Already Feeling the Effects by Evelyn Hart
• Craft on the Production Line by Kristie De Garis
• How Generative and Agentic AI Shift Concern from Technical Debt to Cognitive Debt by Margaret Storey
• The Cuddled Little Vice(Sandman) by Elizabeth Sandifer
• Rupert Lowe’s challenge is real: Do we want a politics of care, or of hate? by Richard Murphy
• The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts by Ketan Joshi
• Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation by Claudio Nastruzz

1. Some Divorce Trends That Aren't Leaving Your Partner Mid-Hike

(tags:satire funny relationships murder )

1. Chuck Norris dead at 86: A history of the actor's anti-LGBTQ+ comments

(tags:bigotry obituary LGBT )

2. School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books

(tags:censorship UK school libraries OhForFucksSake )

This time a week ago I was on the ice with fellow Cambridge alumni for "Alumni game 1", kicking off Varsity. Photos (from one of my Warbirds teammates!) that actually make me look good are over at my hockey insta but here's my personal favourite, capturing a moment in motion:

After about an hour on the ice (2 periods running clock, 4 lines), I had a quick shower, and then spent the next ten or so hours mostly on my feet, doing music and announcements for my Huskies teammates, and scoresheet and in-game announcements for Women's Blues and Men's Blues. Final scores were:

• Alumni game 1: 1-1
• Alumni game 2: not sure, but we won
• Huskies: 3-8
• Women's Blues: 0-1
• Men's Blues: 5-1

The alumni games were a great vibe: we cared, but it wasn't that intense. A whole load of the women I played with in 2022-23 came back, and for me that was really joyful, plus I got to make some new friends. A couple of the older guys in game 1 had played with my old work colleague Brian Omotani back in the day. Although he didn't play, he was there to watch, and he made time to come and find me for a brief catchup later in the day.

The rest of the day though was a different gear. The Huskies game was especially tough to watch, and I felt every goal against my teammates. The Women's Blues game was incredible, the team worked so hard and it was probably the best I've seen them play. And the Men's Blues winning so decisively was delightful, especially as the first goal came from one of the two ex-Huskies (and they both got an assist each later). The whole day was incredibly intense. And then I took my kit home to hang it up, changed, met up with everyone at Mash, danced until the club closed, went to Maccies (and realised just how much my feet hurt) until that closed, and sat on a bench gossiping with two of my favourite people in the club while one of them finished his burger. Eventually we all cycled home. I didn't want the day to end, but I had things to do on Sunday.

That is, very nearly, the end of the season with just the Nationals weekends in Sheffield to go. We've finished the league games, we've had Varsity, we're shifting to "summer ice" open practices, and even had the very last "S&C" gym session on Thursday this week. Some people will graduate and leave soon, and I will miss them so much, but I am so grateful for this university season and the time I've had with these wonderful people.

Without papyrus, what you're writing on is a dead sheep. And if you think of the price of a head of lettuce and the price of a leather jacket, you're understanding the difference between a sheet of papyrus and writing on a dead sheep. So every page of a medieval book is as expensive as that much of a leather jacket. And a medieval book hand written costs as much as a house.

And so to have a library is to be not just rich but mega rich. So only the wealthiest cities contain anybody who has a library. The great library of the University of Paris, the library from Europe's perspective, has 600 books.

There's definitely more than 600 books in this room. Every kiosk at an airport selling Dan Brown novels has more than 600 books. This is nothing.

And at the same time as that, in the Middle East, sultans have libraries of over a thousand books or 5,000 books. There are libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa with thousands of books.* There are libraries in China with thousands of books. Because they in China have cheap paper and rice paper. The Middle East has papyrus.

Europe, and only Europe, is writing on a leather jacket.

https://xkcd.com/3222/

https://xkcd.com/3222/

1. Earth's first mass extinction may have been far worse than believed

(tags:extinction prehistory paleontology )

2. People using AI to give law advice finally reaches Scotland.

(tags:ai law scotland )

3. Denmark was preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland in January, with military support from France, Germany, and Nordic nations.

(tags:war usa norway germany france denmark )

4. This perfectly encapsulates why I won't surf the web without an ad-blocker

(tags:advertising web newspapers )

5. How *did* a multi-storey car park get built in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle?

(tags:edinburgh cars history )

6. Waymo self driving cars are 13x safer than humans

(tags:safety automation driving cars )

7. Police Scotland announce they don't want trans people to report any crimes

(tags:transgender LGBT bigotry OhForFucksSake Scotland )

8. The change that made lighthouses work much better - and why it drove the keepers mad. (Lots and lots of mercury)

(tags:mercury light history safety ships )

9. Gen Z is broke, stressed and exhausted - but boomers won't accept it

(tags:stress society doom )

Nice mist on Arthur's Seat this morning.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer

(tags:weaponry technology 3dprinting )

2. Kagi Translate's AI answers the question "What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?"

(tags:language translation margaretthatcher wtf )

3. Ever wanted to be able to translate from English to LinkedIn? Now you can!

(tags:language funny translation viaswampers )

4. Grok, explain Butlerian Jihad [ai]

(tags:funny scifi )

5. Austin build new housing - rents came down

(tags:economics housing usa )