Tootfinder

So: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Starmer. Can Rishi Sunak really be the only #PrimeMinister in the last six who has not been our worst Prime Minister ever?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@baraa1998/116776179282200618
@… is someone I've known and been supporting for six mont…

Good $DEITY, is there anyone left in the United States who can remember what actual food tastes like?
Yes, I am subtooting.

whisper - brooke wheeler
#music

Two red squirrels playing together socially outside my front window at present. This isn't evidence that they're a pair, but at least there is no mutual hostility. Previously when I've seen two squirrels at one of my feeders, the larger has driven the smaller away.
So this is progress.

This (link below) appears to be @…'s (very careful) commentary on the ongoing #BambuLabs #GPL violation row.
It's an interesting read, and …

Dealing with Incomplete Copyleft Source That Doesn't Correspond
Years ago, copyleft violations were often a mere misunderstanding; vendors intended to comply but made mistakes. In those “before times”, a simple request and short discussion often led to the complete, Corresponding Source (“CCS”) for the the distributed binary works (or, in the case of network-service copyleft, the deployed systems).

RE: #Bitcoin

RE: https://mastodon.world/@hadeel_2026/116597311363543959
I am not going to be able to help Hadeel this week. She is verified, with two young children and a crippled husband.
Please would someone step in?

From a friend, a young woman, in #Gaza, just now:
"The bullets are reaching me.
I can't move freely. I'm trying to protect myself and my children."

Eight days out from breaking my rib, I took my favourite bike out of the shed this afternoon for a wee ride, to see if by any chance I would be able to ride into Castle Douglas (40Km round trip) tomorrow to pick up my medicine.
I managed about two hundred metres.
The answer is 'no'.
#BikeTooter

Excellent from @… on the threats to our world from the #ClimateEnergency
The Rest Is Politics: The Secret Security Threat The Government Don’t Want Us To Know
Episode webpage:

This is a statement World Central Kitchen made a month ago about their operations in #Gaza. Since then, they've cut their Gaza operation by half, and laid off a lot of staff; and many people I'm in touch with in Gaza who were depending on food from them are no longer getting it.
/Continued

Your Gaza Questions Answered | Updated May 2026
WCK answers your questions about our efforts in Gaza. Your Gaza Questions Answered | Updated May 2026 Gaza

Suppose a government created a new fiat currency paid only as a universal #BasicIncome to all residents, and levied highly progressive taxes on property which must be paid in this new currency.
Would this work to redistribute wealth, or would it merely drive up rents?

A UK MP reported a constituent to the police for the 'crime' of writing to him about #Gaza
What's worse, she was arrested at 04:33 -- which presumably means they went into her house in the middle of the night to arrest her. I've had this happen to me fifty years ago -- over a plan to ship schoolbooks to

Brighton woman acquitted on charge of persistent emails to cause annoyance to Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and local MP about Israel’s conduct in Gaza | Doughty Street Chambers
A Brighton woman, CK, was charged with a single offence under s.

"The chains that bind us are not English. They are #Capitalist and the UK state is one of capitalism’s most central nodes of political and economic power. Creating a new independent Scotland matters, not as a project to escape colonial rule by evil England — though there is of course a case to be made for Scotland’s raw deal within the UK — but as a hammer blow against the

Wha's Like Us?
The case for Scottish independence, with the nationalism taken out

RE: https://mastodon.social/@anghamrlkhalil/116767167532209307
@… is doing her best to earn a living fro…

Another fascinating conversation from @….
It had me wondering: how would the world be different if Elon Musk had been loved as a child?
Accidental Gods: Mothering the Future we'd be proud to leave behind - with author and activist Zineb Mouhyi
Episode webpage:

Ireland has some excellent writers.
"It seems that losing colonial control of Egypt has not stopped Denial flowing through the British body politic." -- @…
#TLDR: #MorganMcSweeney

"Robbins and Collard said they had not read Mandelson’s vetting summary document produced by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), relying instead on verbal briefings about its contents. Collard’s evidence highlighted Robertson’s role in the decision."
So the civil servants who decided to override the security vetting for #Mandelson hadn't even bothered to read it themselve…

"There might never even have been an #Israel without arms shipments from the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua to the Zionist paramilitary Haganah in 1939 during the British Mandate over #Palestine. Nine years after that helping hand was extended, the Haganah, with assistance from the Irgun and Leh…

Israel's Crimes Against Humanity in the Americas
There might never even have been an Israel without arms shipments from the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua to the Zionist paramilitary Haganah in 1939 during the British Mandate over Palestine. Nine years after that helping hand was extended, the Haganah, with assistance from the Irgun and Lehi, erased Palestine from the map, building the state of Israel literally on top of where Palestine had been while recruiting Nazis from Europe to help the fledgling Jewish state build up enough weapons. N…

A friend whom I know well and trust has just messaged me about bombing she can hear close to her position in #Gaza tonight.
Another friend, in a different part of Gaza, posted photographs this morning of the aftermath of bombing that had happened close to her last night.
The #Blitz of Gaza contin…

Here's @… with an extraordinary story of honesty and community solidarity from within #Gaza

🍎 The Children Ran Toward the Fruit… But What Happened Next Left Me Speechless. 💔
In one of Gaza's neighborhoods, a street vendor's cart lost its balance, and fruit spilled across the road. 🍎

RE: https://mastodon.social/@baraa1998/116931057994229200
When I was first in touch with @… , she sent me a video of Ib…

"The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments."
#ClimateEmergency

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure

This fence, which you last saw me working on more than a week ago, is still not fully stretched. Working on your own is slow, and working whilst not in good health is slow. I'm getting there.

This is actually a superb, humane podcast on mental health, from an unlikely source. Highly recommended!
Scotcast: Mental health: unhappier than ever, or overmedicated?
Episode webpage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0nl8mg9
Media file:

BBC Radio Scotland - Scotcast, Mental health: unhappier than ever, or overmedicated?
Why diagnoses for mental health are rising, and what we can do about it.

03:30, dawn is just beginning to stain the eastern sky with pink, and already a skylark is carolling on the air.
Yes, my sleep discipline is horribly askew.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@emmohamed123456/116925587674984418
Dear friends,
Can you help @… w…

"Foundry is a proprietary product. Some #NHS data analysts told us that all their work on the FDP would be lost if they no longer had access to #Palantir’s platform. This raises concerns over what many experts call “vendor lock in”. Once you start using a Silicon Valley tech company’s product, it can …

I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all
Paid-for political access and threadbare regulations have helped to embed the US tech firm in the NHS – and beyond. But there is a way to free ourselves, asks Peter Geoghegan of Democracy for Sale

Respondents across the U.K... rated the satirical candidate known as Count #Binface — #Farage's main likely opponent in the Aug. 13 by-election — as more trustworthy and likeable than the man who hopes to be prime minister.

#PhantastikPrompts 15.06.2026
Hand aufs Herz: Wieviele Versionen eines Manuskripts fertigst du an?
I keep all my fiction work in a git repository, and used CVS before git; so the answer is, for novel-length text, often literally thousands. Git has the advantage that you can explore multiple variants of a plot in parallel, and delay decisions as to which one you want to make ca…

RE: https://freesewing.social/@Rania/116758854078444354
Imagine how painful it must be to see photographs of your home, the school you went to as a child, the places where you used to meet your friends, looking like this?

RE: #Gaza over the past few weeks. S…

"For most #Palestinian nationals in #Gaza, this means they are entirely cut off from the protection they would otherwise be entitled to under international law. Theoretically, they have a right to seek asylum. In practice, that right cannot be exercised. Without safe and legal routes to reach the …

Refugee Convention and protection for Palestinians in Gaza
As we mark Refugee Week, Nath Gbikpi reflects on the principles of protection enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Here's @… — who is fundamentally a spiritual person — leading a very serious discussion about how we do politics. Worth a listen.
Accidental Gods: Grown Up Politics: A Chance for Change - Round Table with Neal Lawson of Compass and Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project
Episode webpage:

We live in a world in which we face several separate genuinely existential problems, at least one of which, the #ClimateEmergency, is so critical that unless we make radical change this decade there is no future for life on this planet. And our media have spent the week discussing gossip about a useless crew of politicians not one of whom has the courage even to discuss possible ways to a…

RE: #Ceasefire ?
#Israel

Seriously, is there anyone at all out there who still believes that #Corbyn could have been a worse Prime Minister than #Starmer?
#UKPol

Friends, I know that somewhere on the web there's guidance for how someone in the West can set up a #GoFundMe campaign on behalf of someone in #Gaza
Could someone point me to that guidance, please?

RE: #Gaza

RE: https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/
Excellent piece on AI, human sharing, governance, and the open web. Do, please, read this.

"An AI system can reproduce ethical language because ethical language exists in its training data. It can discuss justice because humans discuss justice. It can talk about compassion because humans write about compassion. But discussing a value is not the same thing as possessing it. Repeating ethical language is not ethical behaviour. Generating moral arguments is not moral agency"
#GenAI

"For decades, we have watched technologists claim that algorithms can replace editors, platforms replace communities, markets replace politics, and code can replace governance. The result has been a mess. Now the same pattern is repeating with AI."
#GenAI
AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume –

"a recurring problem in technological culture is the blinded tendency to mistake technical processes for social processes. If you spend enough time around code, it becomes tempting to imagine that social problems can be reduced to technical ones... This is not a new mistake"
#GenAI
AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume –

@… @… @…
here's the essay I asked you for help with last night.
I hope that…

Reasons to be cheerful, part three
I've been pessimistic about the prospects for the people of Gaza. Their enemy has overwhelming force; their current supporters, at an official or military level, almost none... But let's count our reasons to be cheerful — about Gaza.

@… I've had your interview on the Neurosense podcast on my 'to listen' list for a week or two, but today I had time to listen with attention. First, thank you.
Second, you talk about co-occurring conditions, and you specifically mention #depression

I've just seen an unusually large damselfly with a buff coloured body. Never seen one like it before, that I can recall. Any suggestions as to what species it might be?

RE: #Gaza who are in urgent need of support …

Well, that's probably been the worst day for #Depression of the whole bloody year, but I did not get nothing done.
I finished an essay, and I think it's an important one.
https://www.

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

RE: #Gaza

As far as we know, Earth may be the only planet in the universe with intelligent life.
Considering the number of entirely human-made existential threats we face, it is hard to believe that there will still be intelligent life on this planet three hundred years from now.
Considering how we treat our fellow humans, is it possible to argue that a universe with intelligent life is worth preserving?

To the people predicting that #Binface4Clacton cannot win: consider that those who, in the past, have been voting for #Farage, or @ReformUkLtd, were actually voting to stick it to The Man.
Who looks more like The Man to you: Nigel

(Speaking as someone who, to my shame, once worked for the Dread Pirate) And this would be a problem how?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/12/jamie-dimon-jp-morgan-could-scrap-new-3bn-hq-…

"Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear."
This essay, like all the essays on my blog, is on #CreativeCommons Attribution/Share Alike licence.
Please feel free to republish it anywhere.

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

"We are in a period where we face huge challenges on many fronts: the planet is burning, the species which provide the ecosystem services we depend on to survive are going extinct, we are fighting wars over resources. We need to focus on the real risks we face. #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence is not one of these. It may happen, but probably not soon. If it does happen, i…

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

"none of these legacy behaviours are rational. They arise out of that bundle of behaviours inherited from our two billion years of sexually selected ancestors... If our ancestors had not had these behaviours, we would not be here. Our ancestors were not, in the sense we mean here, rational... A purely rational being — a being created ab initio rational — would not have these behaviours.
No one is proposing to build an AI with a lizard brain. It won't happen."

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

"our energy systems are already massively in carbon debt. We cannot afford to borrow any more carbon from fossil reserves. To burn carbon now to build AGI on the vague hope that it may by some remote chance produce systems with more insight than we now have, at a time when our politicians are already failing to act on the very clear data being produced by their own scientists, it the purest folly"
#AGI

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

"we are at the end of days. Our planet — which is, as far as we know, the only planet anywhere in the universe to support intelligent life — is literally burning as I write this, and it is burning because we are burning it. Building huge data centres to pursue the egocentric fantasies of kleptocrat pirates only accelerates that process"
#AGI

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

Does anyone have a comprehensive spreadsheet of the #Holyrood2026 results that they're prepared to share? It's obvious that BallotBoxScotland has a really good one, but as far as I can see he's not sharing it. SPICe say they're getting their figures from the BBC website(!), but I can't find a spreadsheet download there, either.
I mean I could web-scrape the BBC and W…

I seem to have written a wee essay about #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence #AGI
It's probably not in its final form yet, I'll probably revise a bit. Comments welcome.

AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain
Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear.

Well, Jings.
#Starmer has chosen today of all days to send TWENTY SIX more toffs to the House of Lords.
OK, it seems that this bunch of chancers are 'procedural'. but... Read the room, man, read the room.

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke/116710806433080461
@… I've posted this message and will let you know what …

This is the actual #CountBinface talking about #Democracy. He's serious — and very interesting indeed. Strongly recommended.
I want to see this man in parliament.
#UKPol

BBC Sounds - Could an Ancient Athenian Fix Britain? - Available Episodes
Listen to the latest episodes of Could an Ancient Athenian Fix Britain? on BBC Sounds.

RE: #Gaza. knowing that

"A genocide abroad is helping usher in fascism at home. Poll after poll shows the UK and US publics have switched their support from the #Israelis to the #Palestinians. And the response from the pro- #Israel

"Some of my liberal friends have urged the rest of us on the left to stop obsessing over distant foreign wars, stop lambasting the Democratic and #Labour parties for their (clear) complicity in war crimes. They want us to focus instead on the very real threat from rising authoritarianism in the US and the UK. But the opposition to the destruction of Gaza – and now also

"this goes far beyond mere censorship. It is an open and ongoing assault on liberal democracy itself. Because a society that cannot honestly debate government policy – be it domestic or foreign – cannot meaningfully govern itself. A society that punishes dissent on one issue only emboldens those authoritarians who want to crack down on every issue. The speech restrictions justified against one group are always, inevitably, ultimately, applied to other groups"

RE: https://mstdn.fname.ca/@crispius/116553313718042858
This has been obvious for at least a decade. But will our politicians sit up and take notice? Can they see any time horizon further than the next election?

The Grauniad is reporting that Andy#Burnham (almost certainly the UK's next Prime Minister) claims that he will change policy on #Gaza.
If he delivers on this, it could be a very big deal.
Andy Burnham apologises for Labour’s stance on Gaza and says it ‘didn’t get it right’ | Andy Burnham | The Guardian

Andy Burnham apologies for Labour’s stance on Gaza and says it ‘didn’t get it right’
Exclusive: PM-in-waiting says party must ‘do better’ in approach to Middle East and he will put more pressure on Israel

I wrote a wee response to John Swinney's piece in Saturday's @… . Full disclosure, I've offered this to both The National and to @…, and neither of them wanted to publish it.
But I still think it ne…

Dear John
You say that Peter Murrell is a criminal, and that the party is his victim. Yes, of course, indeed you're right; but the wider Yes movement is also his victim. He stole two thirds of the value of the independence war chest from the SNP, but the SNP had first appropriated that, along with the 'Yes Scotland' branding, the website, and Yes Scotland's data assets, from the wider movement.

@… have called for an independent enquiry into ALL Scottish parties' finances.
That's a genuinely sensible idea.
Now, will other parties back it? After all, what do they have to hide?
#ScotPol

OK, Abdulaziz Ghuloum's #Lisp compiler course, and all of the many implementations thereof, intercept the (usually x86) assembly language generated by GCC, and build from that. My next challenge: how to do the same trick for LLVM-IR...

"The SNP is still the central vehicle of the independence movement, but part of that movement is no longer willing to give it a blank cheque. The clearest evidence came in the Greens’ wins...
Those were politically meaningful defeats... and they suggest that some pro-independence voters want more clarity, more renewal and a more convincing line on climate, public services and the direction of the movement itself." -- Assa Samake Roman

"We’re told that only an SNP majority justifies another vote. Why? Why do SNP votes matter more than Green votes? That shouldn’t stand. It’s not democratic. Why are we adhering to some abstract commandment, like members of a crank cult? The people didn’t vote for this arbitrary rule. Why are we bound by the events of the past? Yes, an SNP majority was the route to the 2014 referendum. But so what? Times change." -- Neil MacKay quoted by Oor Lesley Riddoch

"[The #Fediverse] became the only place consistently posting trustworthy information I could actually access. This became personally relevant when Trump threatened to invade #Greenland, which is the kind of sentence I never expected to type"

Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse
I have never been an "online community first" person. The internet is how I stay in touch with people I met in real life. I'm not a "tweet comments at celebrities" guy. I was never funny enough to be the funniest person on Twitter. So when Twitter was accidentally purchased

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke/116861902885054580
Friends, please give @…'s new blog a boost. She writes …

This morning I have mostly been truing the sawmill bed. The ground had obviously shifted a bit over winter, and it was no longer cutting perfectly true.
It's now cutting much better, although I am going to need to get my blades sharpened.
#TheJoyOfCrofting

RE: https://toot.wales/@linguacelta/116541051874459431
@…, is this legal? It doesn't seem that it should be.

And once again, with#AltText4You.

"It is no coincidence that tech oligarchs in the U.S. have been on a media purchasing spree, scooping up newspapers, TV stations and social media networks - especially in the past 4 years. Controlling the flow of information is a potent thing - and we should be very careful of whom we give that power to."
https:…

W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype
An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.

My view on the #Holyrood2026 election? The #SNP came first because enough people in Scotland have a settled will in favour of #ScottishIndependence, not because very many people feel that the SN…

The media I'm following show 70 constituency seats called; presumably the list votes have all been tallied, so the list seats ought to be all allocated as soon as the last constituencies are called.
I can see that Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch is still pending; where are the other two?
#ScotPol
#Holyrood2026

Back in 2022, after #StormArwen, I rolled up a section of the fence around my wood so that I could haul fallen timber out of the south end of my wood. There's still a lot of fallen timber there, but I think I have hauled out as much as I practically can. So today I decided to get the fence back up.
Of course, brambles had grown through the rolled up fence, so it was far beyond my stre…

And I see Holly Bruce has now won Glasgow South for @…. I know absolutely nothing about Holly, but two #Green constituency MSPs will shake up #SNP complacency even mor…

Well that's the news I've been waiting for. @… has taken Edinburgh Central for @…. I'm very pleased; she's the only genuinely inspirational member of

I inherited my copy of Plato's Republic from my father, and I have always assumed he got it while he was at university. He probably did. But I assumed he bought it new, and he didn't. He's written his name on the flyleaf, but above it someone else has written 'A H Pearce, Jan 88' (very nice handwriting). The title page dates it to 1881.
So this wee book is probably one hundred and forty five years old. It's in remarkable condition.

Well, what a terribly sad thing.
How we will all weep, at the loss of such a patriot.
#Corruption
#ReformUKLtd
#UKPol

Nigel Farage quits as MP amid scrutiny over finances
Reform UK leader reveals he faces second inquiry over financial gifts but says he will fight byelection in Clacton

For the last couple of days, I haven't felt well enough to walk over the hill. Which, as no one else lives this side of the hill and there is no road here, means I haven't been able to get supplies. And I haven't cut firewood, so I can't use my oven.
But hey! That's an opportunity to learn to cook flatbread. I'm not sure it's very good flatbread, but hopefully practice will make perfect.

@…
I have an idea for a new Witcher story set in the modern Suwalki Gap. Would you be interested in kicking some ideas around and if so what's the best email address for you these days?

Our friends the Marshes are now hitting on JD Vance.
https://youtu.be/2J95CTmZUUM

Over the past few weeks I've had correspondence with more than one person from #Gaza who has had posts blocked by the moderators of a particular mastodon instance, and who are not clear why. These are not intemperate people; they are desperate people and may be seen to have posted too many requests for help, I don't know.
Are there particular instances where moderators are known to be s…

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Layan2002/116534274894840691
Being pregnant while being starved is inevitably a perilous situation. Being pregnant and starved while caring for other children is still more perilous.
If you can help @…

"One proves political maturity by not banging on about injustice, by not troubling too much the rich and powerful. To try it out, simply stand in front of a mirror and slowly declare yourself to be “pro-business and pro-worker”. If you can do that without flinching at the obvious contradiction, then congratulations! You too can be prime minister"
This isn't my analysis of why #Starmer

RE: #Gaza is a place of unbearable tragedy after unbearable tragedy. That such …

"If an #LLM trains on UK media and UK media has mentioned Farage 442 times against Greer's 27, the model reflects that. Not because of a deliberate choice, but because that's what was in the data." -- @…
The idea of people asking a

What the hell's happening in south Ayrshire with #ReformUKLtd coming second in Kyle, Carrick & Doon Valley?
That is not good! Although congratulations to Katie Hagmann winning it!

Dumfrieshire, I expected no better of you.
#ScotPol
(#Tory hold)

Galloway, I am ashamed of us.
#ScotPol
(#Tory hold)