Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 16

@porsupah That assumes Londoners can see the moon with all the light pollution 🌆

@noctiluca I am a professor emeritus of tootology and I use CWs

@thamesynne We're number 72, one place below Tajikistan

@thamesynne If you are interested in income inequality then the country ranking by Gini coefficient is a good place to start.

The usual Scandinavian suspects are in the top 20 or so, but the least unequal country is in fact Ukraine. Kazakhstan and Belarus are in the top few too - it's not always the richest countries that are the most equal.

@thamesynne The map on this page is a disgrace: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Median_UK_Income_by_location.png

No country should have such a pronounced Rich Region surrounded by a much, much poorer hinterland.

@GreenandBlack Lately, it feels like we're doing the heavy lifting for Google's self driving cars.

"Click on all the buses" etc, it's so transparent that we're training their algorithms for free.

@saxnot @simon_brooke Captain Scott didn't think the Antarctic was a tiny speck

@thamesynne Only if the punishment for treason is banishment to mainland Europe

@thamesynne I've got a half-read Private Eye as well - it's always interesting/amusing stuff but so. much. scandal. every issue gets a bit hard to read without getting cross

> It's nonsense to talk of 'hard to reach' people. People outside the mainstream are not hard to reach, they are just easy to reject.

> Many of us don't fit in to the expectations we feel society has of us. We feel inadequate, pigeonholed, unacceptable. It's easy to say 'blame the media' but there is no such one thing as 'the media', just many individuals working in many organisations. Any of us can be 'the media' and step up to make sure our point of view is heard.

http://soundartradio.org.uk/community/wellbeing/

@thamesynne Who is Bannerman? I've been listening to pop radio all day and missed the news

🎵 Words beginning with K-N-O
Words that end in B-H-E-A-D 🎵

@porsupah Also, I live in the North so I assume anyone charging, er, 2.2 for a coffee is wearing a striped suit and a bag labelled SWAG

@simon_brooke @fitheach My garden has the strangest weeds! I pulled some foxgloves which had randomly decided to grow in the middle of the path, and there are tiny but really tasty wild strawberries at the back of the garage.

I never seem to get bog standard English garden weeds like dandelions or nettles, just these randomly growing flowers and fruits.

@porsupah I always wonder if they're paying for menu printing by the character

@fitheach There's some of that in a neglected corner of my garden. It's become home to what looks like hundreds of yellow-and-black striped caterpillars, which will eventually become pretty red-and-black cinnabar moths.

I'm going to rip it out at some point, but the butterflies and moths and bees seem to love it right now, so it stays for a bit longer.

@GreenandBlack There's been a concerted, insidious push over the past few years especially to merge the concepts of nation and military - Britain is its forces and the forces are Britain.

There's also been a concerning increase in abuse and silencing of people who question the role of the military. There are very few critical voices in the media these days - it's all "our brave boys" propaganda stuff.

@GreenandBlack "They're our heroes, selflessly served our country" etc. No they're not, they're blokes who chose to do a job, a fairly well-paid job compared to many available in Northern working-class communities.

If they had been conscripted then I could see the point, conscription is fucking evil, but there's nothing heroic about being a paid mercenary of a capitalist state fighting stupid wars to keep your masters rich

@GreenandBlack It feels like the military is being 'normalised' lately if that makes sense, we're being forced into viewing them as a normal part of everyday life.

We have regular TV shows about 'our heroes', there's an Armed Forces Day now, the military are regularly in schools, the media consistently put military veterans on a pedestal like they've done something superhuman rather than just a job that should be unnecessary.

Is it partly to acclimatise us to seeing more of them?