Tootfinder

"Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Wildfires

Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires
Exclusive: England ‘desperately unprepared’ for effects of crisis including water shortages and heatwaves

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US military was preparing to replace the USS Lincoln with the USS George Washington,
as concerns mount over the conditions aboard the Lincoln.
Reports by the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes this week described shortages of supplies and water as well as plumbing problems,
low morale and deteriorating mental health among the Lincoln’s roughly 5,000 sailors,
and further reported that there had been multiple attempts…

US navy veterans and military health experts express concern over USS Abraham Lincoln sailors
Prolonged deployment is coupled with reports of water shortages, plumbing issues and attempts to jump overboard

"UK ministers explore raising price of water for industrial users amid shortages"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Water

UK ministers explore raising price of water for industrial users amid shortages
Environment Agency says talks under way about increasing prices for industrial users to try to reduce poor water management

Code Black for water shortage in the Delft region of the Netherlands! No use of surface water (canals, lakes) allowed anymore. Water managers fear intrusion of salty seawater, as damage to dikes due to low water levels needs to be prevented.

Vanwege de droogte voor het eerst de sluizen dicht in het waterrijke westen: ‘Het is code zwart, vanaf middernacht is water onttrekken verboden’
Droogte: Vanaf woensdagnacht gaan in het Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland de sluizen dicht en gaat een verbod in om oppervlaktewater te onttrekken. Dat besef lijkt nog niet bij iedereen ingedaald. „Voorheen was het een theoretisch model. Dit is het hier en nu.”

The US Department of Commerce's BIS is formally investigating whether Chinese companies like Moonshot are accessing advanced US AI chips to train their models (Leo Schwartz/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/u-

U.S. Investigates Chinese AI Companies’ Access to Chips Amid Moonshot Accusations
This week, Trump administration officials have taken to the airwaves and X to blast Chinese open source AI companies like Moonshot, accusing them of stealing intellectual property from the likes of Anthropic and other U.S. AI developers. The administration’s concerns aren’t just rhetoric, ...

I've thought often the last couple of years about how the “Fire your developers! Use AI!!” craze feels really similar to the outsourcing / offshoring mania of a few decades ago — and how many of the same problems it shares:
- Cost-cutting shiny thing break management brains
- but turns out generating code was the easy part
- and building cumulative shared understanding is everything
- and shortcuts around that dig you in a hole really fast
- and that hole is full of code that nobody can maintain.
Something in the water, I guess. Something always in the water that once in a while explodes when conditions are right, like algae blooms.

"The areas of the UK facing drought and water shortages until next spring"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Drought #Water

The areas of the UK facing drought and water shortages until next spring
New research by the Environment Agency shows the country will need above average rainfall throughout autumn and winter for all areas to be out of drought by April 2027

Spent the weekend with a few friends at Beautiful Days festival out in Exeter, which is the one that The Levellers run and fill with mostly 90s bands.
So lots of old men on stage and in the audience. Including me. It's me.
Weather was mostly good as you'd like. Not quite as too-hot as it's been lately and only The Undertones made the weather gods angry. After the end of their wet set the double rainbow promising no more rain proved a true promise.
Mostly either old things, or things I'd never heard of, because I haven't really paid attention to music since the 1900s.
Young new folks seemed to be mostly half Welsh, and included Gwenno who was beautiful in her cat-mask and sang a song in old Cornish about cheese, Gina Larner who was playing country rock with her beautiful sparkly country boots, Trampoline who had one guitarist replaced by a cardboard cut-out for some reason I missed and are from Swansea, and Ben Brown whose rider included a lacy fancy dress and seizable stick - his merch song as he danced around and stripped off the ten tee-shirts he sells and was wearing all at once for the first half apparently was memorable.
Old folks on stage included Billy Brag, who is so right-on and woke you wonder why all the other musicians are so apolitical. Madness, who have banger after banger but lack some energy now they're so old. The Undertones, who angered god by still singing about Teenage Kicks in their sixties, Super Furries who, inexplicably drew a much smaller crowd as people watched the Proclaimers instead I guess. The Divine Comedy, who acts very sophisticated mixing cocktails on stage. Also The Wonder Stuff who still mock their own audience but got us all nostalgic and emotional, they're loved and welcome in my home too.
And of course the Levellers who fill the field because they don't put anyone else up at the same time as them and so WAY up on the hill behind the ice cream van where you can't really see but at least you can move.
The Nanaz are both old and new, in that they've only been playing for a few years and yet are already each as old as the grandad bands playing here singing songs about menopause and being told they used to be beautiful.
It's a lovely smallish festival, big enough to have choices and headliners, but small enough to walk across, with hardly any bandwidth and which is too far away really. That drive home was very tedious.
Bravo though though. Hope it outlasts the Levellers, and both keep going for decades more. Hope to be back.
#music #festival #uk #beautifulDays