Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 20

That would make me dizzy if it came up as my default wallpaper. I suffer from migraines and just looking at it is making me feel woozy.

Can't you keep it simple?

@kde

Migraine today. Auras are weird. I literally just watched my tea cup appear to move across the desk by itself.

@StuC I am generally on the 'no borders anywhere' side of the argument, not because it would benefit me personally but because I think it's the direction the world needs to go in.

If you don't have the freedom to be unpatriotic and say bollocks to your own country, to vote with your feet and move, then you aren't really free. You're trapped living under one system forever, whether that's Sweden or North Korea. It's stifling.

@StuC It's how you define "skilled", though. I didn't go to university so I wouldn't get into most countries through their skilled worker visa schemes. They generally have a really narrow focus on formal things that they can measure through a points system.

Under the current system, I could go to eg. NL and prove my worth. But under a non free-movement system, I would pretty much be stuck on Brexit Island with the Sun readers and Facebook ranters.

@fitheach @simon_brooke That's a horrible policy. There are instances out there which consist literally of people who just hurl abuse. There's no benefit to having those instances federated and most Mastodon instances block them.

It stinks of "free speech", which on here is a dog whistle meaning "be as much of a disagreeable arsehole as you like".

@artsyhonker Ofcom rules mean you should run predominantly content produced locally, but they are weakly enforced.

Enforcement is reactive rather than proactive - someone has to complain. And then in most cases, the "punishment" is a recorded breach of your licence without any further action taken.

Only one community radio licence has ever been revoked and that was for broadcasting lectures by a banned terrorist. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/28/ofcom-bans-iman-fm-radio-station-al-qaida-anwar-al-awlaki

@balrogboogie Ceilidh space, what a great name for an instance 🕺

@D Fuck off

@artsyhonker Personally I don't think religious radio should be a thing. For a period, we had a large part of the local radio spectrum taken up with various religious preaching - there was the Christian station, several Muslim stations, a Jewish station.

A few have since closed, but I still don't think a scarce public resource (ie. the RF spectrum) should be used for preaching to the detriment of more broad-based, inclusive community radio.

@artsyhonker The radio station is licensed as "community radio" but the content is largely US originated, mainly from right-wing groups like Focus on the Family. It's either automated Christian pop or US podcasts and syndicated programming.

The placing of the station in an area with a large Muslim population is not accidental. Only a certain number of stations are allowed in each area because the FM spectrum is limited, and this station is a 'blocker' to prevent a Muslim station appearing.

@artsyhonker It's one small town, and minor in the great scheme of things, but pushing a conservative, anti-choice, anti-LGBT social agenda through gaining and holding political control is very much part of the playbook of these people.

@artsyhonker My rural hometown (I no longer live there) has been taken over by evangelical religion in a major way.

There is a large evangelical church in town, the local MP is a born-again anti-choice anti-LGBT woman who attends that church and was selected by members of the church. The local Tory party and evangelical church are pretty much one and the same.

You can't get anything done politically in the town if you aren't linked to the Christians and it's getting worse.

@Owen_Roberts Perhaps I have paid a bit more attention than the average English person because I happened to be in Derry (which I found a friendly, welcoming place) the week before it happened.

But I have seen it in the Guardian, the BBC News website and elsewhere. It's just that "violence in NI around the 12th" isn't really unexpected breaking news anymore, sadly.

@Owen_Roberts It was on BBC Newsline in NI to be fair.

@artsyhonker Apologies, I didn't mean to cause offence. I am religious, if you count Quakers as religious, but we don't run Quaker FM or try to convert people.

Meanwhile there's an evangelical radio in my English town that literally advertises gay cure "therapy". This imported US right-wing religion isn't 'positive' in the slightest, I find it insidious and creepy.

@inAktion It doesn't help that we've got a bloody fun fair over the road. The circus uses the same site, but they knock off the music at 9pm and it attracts families and kids so I don't care.

The fun fair goes into the night and attracts the kind of people for whom a drunken brawl is a good night out. I could go to my parents but I like my own space.

When you do a web search for "positive radio", you get a lot of links to that lunatic Noel Edmonds and a bunch of religious stations, like the US K-Love ("Positive, Encouraging K-Love").

When did the god squad get to monopolise the word 'positive' to describe their media? Why can we not have positive, hopeful, upbeat radio that's not religious?

@fitheach Sometimes you'll find that you don't get all the results for a certain hashtag or search term because you only see what your instance has linked with.

There might be a TV-focused instance out there somewhere that has hours of discussion of Outlander, but hasn't federated with your instance. It's a bit of a drawback, and it's why you get those annoying "federation bots" following you.

@thamesynne I did pick up an old HP thin client for less than a tenner yesterday. As a computer it's junk, but as a slightly better replacement for a Pi for things like a home NAS or a media centre it seems reasonable. 1G ethernet rather than the dodgy <100M on the Pi helps.

I've got it to run an SDR server. It's not powerful enough to run the SDR itself, but all it has to do is take the raw data from the receiver and send it to a computer that can deal with it.

@thamesynne I've also got an Orange Pi, which is a cheaper knock off but doesn't have nearly as much software support or community around it. That is literally just sitting there - I must stick it on eBay.