@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIs it just me, or do others find it odd to hear journalists say that the UK 'must' take action to protect 'ex-pats' who have chosen to evade their fair share of taxation by moving to the Gulf?
I think an appropriate response would be to say to them, yes, of course you can return to blighty if you pay off all the taxes you've evaded while you've been away, but if you choose not to, you're on your own.
@scott@carfree.city"Both candidates agreed that Market Street should be reopened to cars (a few people booed, then some cheered). They also both agreed that new housing developments should include more parking."
No problem for the "urbanists" at SF YIMBY, who just endorsed Sherrill.
https://
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotI was at a meeting last night of key decision makers in the two main civic institutions of my village, and no one in the room was under seventy.
There are reasons.
1. House prices are way beyond what people of working age can afford;
2. Limited social housing is (rightly) allocated to the most vulnerable, but they typically don't have the bandwidth to take on civic roles;
3. There are few jobs in the local economy for degree-educated young people;
/Continued…
@kexpmusicbot@mastodonapp.uk🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Brooke Valentine:
🎵 Long as You Come Home
#BrookeValentine
https://djdeadeye.bandcamp.com/track/brooke-valentine-long-as-you-come-home
https://open.spotify.com/track/4wqjDYmQF0SZUHeWpl7iCi
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://freesewing.social/@Rania/116175514967908052
When I was prioritising my list of people to give to this week -- a task which is always difficult -- @…
@memeorandum@universeodon.comHegseth says the leader behind effort to assassinate Trump has been 'hunted down and killed' in Iran (Brooke Singman/Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hegseth-says-leader-behind-effort-assassinate-trump-has-been-hunted-down-killed-iran
http://www.memeorandum.com/260304/p50#a260304p50
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotThis is a really good analysis of how #Labour became a right wing party.
I was aware of their courting of rich donors, but I'd missed the revolving door between Labour governments and the defence and private healthcare industries, and the point about Labour directing anger towards immigrants in order to divert it from the
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot“Everybody is so fed up with #Labour’s only strategy being ‘vote Labour to keep the Tories out’, and now it’s ‘vote Labour to keep Reform out’,” Spencer tells me. “It’s like: how about you actually just do something to make people vote for you?” -- #Green party candidate Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and De…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotH'mmm... I have been working patiently and carefully on bugs in my memory allocation system all day,
At 22:57, I had a build which was substantially better, but not perfect. I kept on working patiently, and now, at 00:37, I have a build which is totally broken.
Fortunately, I did make a tactical commit to git while things were better.
#TheJoyOfSoftwareEngineering
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"An analysis in October suggested that on just 27% of the vote (roughly in the middle of its polling over the past year), Reform UK would win 48% of the seats, allowing it to take power with a small coalition partner. If Reform UK forms the next government, it will be for one reason and one reason alone: our electoral system." -- George Monbiot, citing
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"While the rest of us headed into years of immiseration, the filthy rich carried on regardless – and they did so with the willing aid of the centre-left elite, whether Peter #Mandelson or the French Socialists or the US Democrats." -- Aditya Chakrabortty
#Kleptocracy
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotBother, the water pipe over the hill has frozen.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRight! After, frankly, way too much work, I once again have a garden gate which opens properly and easily both ways, and which closes and latches properly and easily. I don't love the galvanised steel gatepost, but it should not need to be replaced again in my lifetime.
#TheJoyOfCrofting
#Crofting
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotMoonrise over the roundhouse.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotDear @…, thank you so much for this podcast. It makes me think very carefully about the narratives that I am trying to write. But let me in turn urge you to reject the thought that 'there is no alternative' to money.
Money is the vector which transmits the disease of capitalism.
Accidental Gods: Thoughts from the Edge: Navigating the turbulent seas…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWorld's oldest toddler receives pacifier.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/dec/05/fifa-peace-prize-trump-world-cup-infantino
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotI think what we all want to know just now is when #ICE will leave Minneapolis.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotI visited a popular #OpenSource documentation site this morning, and the glare almost blinded me.
Folk, in this day and age, if you run a website, there is NO EXCUSE for not implementing `@media: prefers-color-scheme(dark)`
But, I thought, this is open source! I can submit a pull request to fix this!
Reader, there are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR distinct colours specified in th…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotFor all those who hoped 2026 was not going to be as bad as 2025...
Tough luck.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotDefinitely spring. Too warm to cycle in a hat.
#BikeTooter
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: #Hypocrisy
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://mastodon.social/@lubna_alser8/116153570038571273
Can you imagine being pregnant while being starved, forced to live in a makeshift tent in the street, surveilled by drones every day and bombed and shelled every night?
There are many …
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotHe likes to keep his fire engine* clean, it's a clean machine...
* Not actually a fire engine
#BikeTooter
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIf the use of #GenerativeAI continues to grow in academia, are universities which wish to maintain a reputation for excellence going to be forced to move to examining undergraduates by viva?
It is the only thing I can think of that would work, but it would be hugely expensive.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotI don't want war in Europe. I don't want war at all. I was a pacifist for the first 65 years of my life, and still tend that way. But we don't have a way of of deterring wars of aggression, and we live in a world where those are happening -- in #Ukraine, in #Palestine, and elsewhere. So we…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Everything I’ve feared would happen is happening.
America has fallen. NATO is teetering. Europe is on the brink of some new darkness. The Silicon Valley tech companies are now in an alliance with the worst people on the planet" -- @…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotOne of the triggers for the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381 was a new poll tax, levied on all adults; and particularly, the fact that the test for adulthood was having pubic hair. This led to the contractors collecting the tax systematically looking up young women's skirts.
It strikes me that one really powerful way to oppose anti #Trans legislation is to ask 'do you want the p…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://zirk.us/@impermanen_/116156859999115710
Celui-ci est pour toi, @…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotEveryone in the UK, there's an official petition to parliament to 'Call a public inquiry into pro-Israel influence on politics & democracy'.
Please could I strongly urge everyone to sign it?
#Israel
#PalestineAction
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIt's not been a very nice day -- it's been wet, and the wind is strong -- but the birdsong in the wood this evening is amazing.
Blackbirds, song thrushes, robins, probably some others.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotThe #UKLabour party have become a deeply sleazy and unethical organisation. No wonder #Mandelson felt so at home there.
#Labour
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotModern #Lisp systems distinguish between several different types of string-like-things:
1. symbols
2. strings
3. keywords
By convention we typically use symbols as handles on things bound in the environment, keywords as handles on things bound in maps (hash tables), and strings as data.
However, in all the Lisp specifications I can find, and certainly in
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIs there really any doubt any longer that the reason #Starmer and #McSweeney appointed #Mandelson as ambassador to the #US
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Concentration camps involve the mass detention of civilians without due process on the basis of political, racial, ethnic, or religious identity. And that is where we’re at right now."
Into the abyss
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/into-the-abyss
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotHappy New Year to all of you out there. I doubt anyone is lamenting the passing of 2025. Here's hoping 2026 cannot be worse.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIt strikes me that if Mhairi Black was still in parliament, she and Hannah the Plumber could make a hugely effective double act.
#ScotPol
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the leftwing union Unite, had a blunt piece of advice [for #UKLabour 'Stop listening to your rich mates and start listening to everyday people.'"
Just so. Britain doesn't need yet another party funded by and beholden to the #kleptocrats
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotDear friends
Bara'a (@…) is someone I'm in touch with in Gaza, whom I've corresponded with, who is verified by the @… project, who I'm sure is genuine, who urgently needs support. This week I am not …
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotThis morning I have promoted a story, Wisdom, from my 'ideas' folder to my 'projects' folder.
"If I were to go, and were to give them sound advice, they would surely kill me. As they killed my great grandmother, and my grandmother, and my aunt, and now my mother."
A young woman is hereditary Wisdom Keeper of a warrior tribe; she's been sent away as a child, by her mother, for safety. Now, the God sends her back.
But is it wise?
A medita…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWow! This is one hell of a victory speech! Hannah Spence is going to be a real star.
#UKPol
#Greens
#HannahSpence
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotShould we be surprised that the peoples of the Bronze Age chose to create their gods in their own image? After all, in the present day, the American Right have managed to recreate Jesus of Nazareth in their own image, a far more audacious intellectual feat.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Meta’s business is both supporting and profiting from organized crime, and at 10% of its revenue, it’s also kind of dependent on it... I can find no analyst commentary on Meta making sixteen billion dollars on fraud, because it doesn’t matter to them"
#Kleptocracy
#Enshittification
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"We are watching one of the greatest wastes of money in history, all as people are told that there “just isn’t the money” to build things like housing, or provide Americans with universal healthcare, or better schools"
#Kleptocracy
#Enshittification
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWoohoo! I just typed
`(mapcar (lambda (n) (:documentation (meta n))) (keys (oblist)))`
into the REPL of my frankenlisp, and printed out the documentation of every function it knows.
I am getting close to the point that other people can play with this...
#Lisp
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Mandelson’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya"
I wonder where we've heard of Mishcon de Reya before? Are they a very reputable law firm, I wonder? Oh, yes, the money-laundering specialists involved in the persecution of Maltese anti-corruption campaigner Daphne Caruana Galizia, before her murder.
Lovely people.
#Mandelson
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWell, that's my major project of the past year completed.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWhich ~~phrase, paragraph, or page~~ are you most proud of writing this month?
#writerscoffeeclub 2026-01-29
"all of the people who live in the land that was promised and is now tortured have equal claim to be of the seed of Abraham"
It's not from fiction, it's from a bleak essay about the situation in
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://hachyderm.io/@jzb/115797705935538268
Read this, @… ? Sounds as if it might be your thing,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIn #CommonLisp, `=` takes arbitrary numbers of args, but `eq` takes exactly two.
In #Scheme `=` takes arbitrary numbers of args, and `eq?` also takes arbitrary numbers of args.
In #Logo, `equalp` …
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRight, problems for today. First. #Lisp problems. I think the bug in `cond` fires when a clause succeeds but returns `nil`.
First, write a unit test which checks for that, but run that test on my laptop where it physically cannot generate millions of stack frames.
Second, rewrite `cond` to call a separate helper function, `cond_clause`, which takes one arg and returns `nil` on failure, `…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: #Gaza. Her daughters have both died in the war, and she has …
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotFirst flowers of spring in my orchard!
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotAnother wee ditty fae the Marsh Family this morning, and if this one disnae gar ye greet ye've nae hairt.
#Minnesota
#ReneeGood
#AlexPretti
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotOn Wednesdays, I decide how much I can afford to give this week, and who to give it to. I've made my decisions for this week; it's hard, and I shall give more than i can really afford, because the need is so great.
But these are people I cannot give to, whom I feel guilty for not being able to give to. Please, if you can, do what I cannot. Help them.
#Gaza
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"When you focus on growth in GDP as your primary goal without any concern for whether what creates that growth is of real value rather than simply being capable of being counted, whilst being indifferent to the distribution of the gains, those already vulnerable are bound to suffer as a consequence... The policy failure this chart exposes is not an accident; it will be achieved by #Labour by d…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotOn this International Remembrance Day for the Victims of the #Holocaust, can we please also spare a thought for the victims of the #genocide that is happening right now, right in front of our faces?
What is the point of our remembering the atrocious crimes of the past if we do not strive to pre…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." [Luke 2:13-14]
#Antichrist
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotLast night I discovered a huge 'new' bug in the integer arithmetic of my #Lisp system which I'd been unaware of because I don't have a unit test for it and it isn't something I'd been worried about and don't normally do.
Weirdly, it makes me feel hopeful. It is this:
:: (- 5 4)
1
:: (- 4 5)
4,294,967,295
What's happening here? Integer…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotA friend in #Gaza, living in a tattered tent with a sick child, just wrote to me 'I hope things improve.'
It makes me want to cry. I don't believe that, in all my long life, we've seen a population anywhere in the world suffering such terrible punishment and, at the same time, being able to communicate clearly with the outside world. How can things improve for her?
It wou…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"But it’s become impossible to watch the courage of whistle-blowing everyday citizens putting their lives on the line to fight for the neighbors they don’t even know, or to see the utter depravity of top government officials slandering innocent murder victims while their bodies are still warm, and not conclude: Yes, there is good and evil in this world."
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot“My father warned us, ‘When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind,’” Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote of Pretti’s murder. “What we are witnessing now (masked raids, people taken without due process, vigilante, Gestapo, and slave patrol-like tactics, normalized under the color of law) is a moral crisis.”
#Trump
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotLast week, backups on my @… laptop stopped working, because the laptop ceased to recognise when the backup drive was plugged in. The drive is an old fashioned spinning rust thing which plugs in over USB. I diagnosed a fault with the USB port. So I ordered another USB port from Framework; it arrived today, I plugged it in, and backup is running n…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://mastodon.social/@lina19942810/115961991023223912
This is what worries me. When we have a population crowded into collapsing camps in flood zones, deprived of shelter and adequate food, in
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: #Holocaust
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotThe weather overnight has been somewhat inclement. We've certainly taken damage, I haven't yet been outside to assess how much. The wind is still gusting to force 9 {75 km/h}; I think it's been stronger. No snow here.
I cannot help but think of the poor folk in Gaza in weather like this.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotThis afternoon has largely been spent drumming up, hauling in, and stacking more firewood. I feel deeply sorry for friends in #Palestine who are having great trouble finding any wood to burn.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotOK, this is genuinely scary. It's a picture of me, aged 5. It was taken in 1960. It was scanned and uploaded to Google Photos in 2002. No one has told Google where it was taken. But the map, bottom right, is correct.
Obviously, in 1960, my father's pre-war Exakta camera did not have GPS. Could you identify, from that picture, exactly where it was taken?
Google can.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotSBCL #CommonLisp
(nth 2 '(1 2 3 4 5 6))
3
#Clojure
(nth '(1 2 3 4 5 6) 2)
3
#Scheme
(list-ref '(1 2 3 4 5 6) 2)
;Value: 3
So, they differ on the…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot@… Dear Mohamed, it would help you to get verified by the @… team.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotSilent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is quiet...
Sleep in heavenly peace.
#Gaza
#GazaGenocide
#CeaseFireGaza
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotA night of weird, vivid dreams, mostly about personal loss, but over it all a sense of an utterly weary God, disillusioned with humanity, tired of our vanity and our heedlessness, no longer thinking that it's either possible to save us, or that we merit the effort of trying.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotHi, @…
What have you got for me?
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotHAMLET: I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
SIMON_BROOKE: You and my both, brother. You and me both.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Even if #OpenAI was run by decent, ethical, friendly, trustworthy people (which would then of course make them not work on the products OpenAI has, but it’s just a thought experiment) their products would need to be criticized for what they are and what they do." — @…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotAnd for the very best political commentary on #Trump's antics this week, try here.
#Greenland
#Davos
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotNo babes in my manger this Christmas day. But the cattle are eating happily
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotFriends in #Gaza, what fuel are you using for cooking? I heard from someone this week that they were cooking on a fire of plastic, which isn't healthy; but is there any other fuel to be found?
People not in Gaza, please don't respond to this post.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotUtterly bizarre dream. It's about 1880. A party of travellers from Finland are on a train which halts in a marshalling yard in a northern Prussian city at night. A fire has started in a warehouse close to the marshalling yard, and the travellers notice that there is a train of empty naphtha wagons close to the fire. They disembark from their train and persuade the marshalling yard staff that this is dangerous and the naphtha wagons should be moved.
/Continued
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"The second excuse is that the uber-rich will flee the country. There are three possible responses to this claim. The first is that there’s no evidence to support it. The second is, if true, good riddance: they do us more harm than good. The third is to say: then the obvious solution is a global tax-avoidance measure."
#Kleptocracy
Money Talks – George Monbiot
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"To restore democracy and create a fairer, safer, greener world, we must bring the ultra-rich to heel, cutting their fortunes until they can no longer bludgeon us."
#Kleptocracy
Money Talks – George Monbiot
https://www.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Polling across 36 nations by the Pew Research Center found that 84% see economic inequality as a big problem, and 86% see the political influence of the rich as a major cause of it. In 33 of these nations, a majority believe their country’s economic system needs either “major changes” or “complete reform”. In the UK, a YouGov poll revealed, 75% support a wealth tax on fortunes above £10m, while only 13% oppose it."
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"This is the metric by which you can tell who in politics are your allies and who are your enemies: whether they support or oppose the extreme concentration of wealth. In fact, the matter should be definitional." — George Monbiot
#Kleptocracy
Money Talks – George Monbiot
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotFormer solicitor general "Lord" Charlie Faulkner says, obviously correctly, that now Andrew Mountbatten-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been arrested for misconduct in public office for sending privileged government information to Jeffrey #Epstein, "Lord" Peter #Mandelson is inevitably next.…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot#Clojure is not widely used in Africa, it seems. Or Greenland.
Everywhere else, though...
https://clojure.org/news/2026/02/18/state-of-clojure-2025
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotIt's worth saying that the reason I am able to be generous to friends in #Gaza is that other friends are generous to me. And the gift of the ability to be generous is a very great gift indeed.
You know who you are. Thanks!
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotFull disclosure: I have experience in living under just a tarpaulin. I have experience of surviving storms under just a tarpaulin. Few people in the west have. So I can imagine and understand the present experience of people in #Gaza in a way few in the west can.
#GazaGenocide
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Some are proud because they made a lot of money while cutting down a forest. Others are proud because they are planting trees that will produce the oxygen breathed by their grandchildren. What if success was not privatizing resources but instead contributing to the commons, to make it each day better, richer, stronger?" — @…
Why there’s no European Google?…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"Let’s start with the Injustice Foundation, which has given more than £380,000 to the Free Speech Union in recent years..."
Well, at least the Injustice Foundation are honest about what they stand for.
Who funds the Free Speech Union? - by Peter Geoghegan
https://de…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"We have a funding system for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that is entirely based on the spending priorities of the UK government in England. The Welsh government has less borrowing powers than a local council, and it often publishes its final budget nine months into the financial year, because the Treasury has decided to change funding in England. This doesn’t work. And it can’t work"
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot"The prime minister of England also doubles up as the prime minister of the whole of the UK. This is not ideal. The governor of California can’t also be the president of the US. There are clearly conflicting priorities"
#ScottishIndependence
#WelshIndependence
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotReading Tim O'Reilly's essay on the economic future of #AI, one sentence stands out:
"By product-market fit we don’t just mean that users love the product or that one company has dominant market share but that a company has found a viable economic model, where what people are willing to pay for AI-based services is greater than the cost of delivering them"
/Continued
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotWell, yesterday I did take my recycling in to the coup. It was a good ride, but it was tough — occasional flurries of snow, and stiff wind. Today I'm very tired, and it's 3.7° *inside* the house. So I think I'm going to light the stove, which I normally don't do in daytime because I can't really afford the wood, and have an easy day.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot @simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://mastodon.social/@baraa1998/115934078414694476
Bara'a isn't the only single parent sleeping in the wreckage of a totally inadequate tent just above the waterline on the beach in Gaza tonight. Ibrahim isn't the only sick child.
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scotRE: https://pdx.social/@hellomiakoda/115761024717277564
"unless you're going to try to procreate with a particular individual, I cannot think of any reason anyone's trans status fucking matters" -- @…
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot“They won’t imprison us all, they know if they fill the prisons with activists, we will overpower them from within. So flood the damn streets in your millions. Shut down these factories in your thousands! They can never arrest the resistance in our smiles. We will use the shards of our broken hearts to spear the system of injustice.” -- Qesser Zuhrah
#SayHerNamee
