Carspiracy - You’ll Never See The World The Same Way Again YouTube video by Global Cycling Network

WATCH: Have you heard about the “Carspiracy” that’s brainwashed us into #Motonormativity? Watch this video, and then share and discuss it widely. Addressing it starts with knowing it’s happening. By the Global Cycling Network (who should be on Bluesky) featuring @ianwalker.bsky.social. #UrbanTruth

The pay premium of the median teacher, or university lecturer, has also fallen

Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet.
This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.

5 ways GDP gets it totally wrong as a measure of our success The beauty of gross domestic product is its single figure. It squishes all of human activity into a couple of digits, like a frog jammed into a matchbox. But this condensing is also GDP’s flaw.

The GDP delusion is still alive and well. Sadly.

Peoples' material conditions and happiness cannot be measured using GDP.

It certainly doesn’t feel like it… still no funding for pretty much anything: local authorities on their knees, NHS at permanent breaking point, universities on verge of bankruptcy, social care unable to cope… so tell me why this is good news? Call 📞 me when this wealth actually delivers 4 everyone

In a nutshell. 😊

Het leek ook de mooie zandstranden hier aan de oostkust in Schotland waar ook meestal geen kat te zien is…

Maar waar is ‘hier’? 🤔

Absolutely this. The narrative that there ‘is no money’ is completely bogus. There is absolutely money, but in the wrong places

Bad decision by Electoral Commission, esp to allow the logo, so enabling the kind of deliberate spoiler effort it was created to stop (eg running "Literal Democrats")

#wildlife #WildlifeCrossings

More photos of wildlife crossings in comments. Great idea!

Finally!

Researchers: here’s how to audit your fragmented digital identity Services that track researcher profiles can splinter people’s online identities — but there are ways to keep them consistent.

Interesting piece on the fragmenting of digital identities in the sciences, key point:

"keep your ORCID profile up to date... it is controlled by the researcher, portable across institutions and designed to connect to publishers, funders and organizational systems"

#AcademicChatter

Publication of the study on Wealth Taxation, Including Net Wealth, Capital and Exit Taxes The study on wealth taxation, including net wealth, capital and exit taxes aims to provide a better understanding of these taxes, their interrelation and consequences.

New EU Commission study into the possibilities of taxes on extreme wealth

There is no lack of money to finance Europe’s green transition, and break our dependence on fossil fuel imports – the EU just needs the political will to make the super rich pay their fair share

#TaxTheSuperRich

Ah, science…

These really are the ravings of a lunatic…

Chinook salmon found naturally hatching in Upper Klamath River for first time in a century The Klamath Tribes are celebrating evidence of Chinook salmon spawning in Klamath River tributary.

After big dams on the upper Klamath River in far northern CA were removed in 2024, Chinook (king) salmon migrated upstream for the first time in 100+ years--and now they have hatched.

Anthropic Code Crisis Creates Copyright Contradiction For publishers, authors, and other creators, the schadenfreude might feel well-earned, writes James Ball. But is it justified?

Anthropic is using copyright claims to try to stop its leaked code being used to train rival AI models.

Critics are noticing something of an irony, given Anthropic use of pirated materials to train its models.

I've dug into the whole thing for @techpolicypress.bsky.social

How South Korea plans to use the Iran crisis to spur a renewables revolution Energy crisis unfolding in Middle East has added political urgency, and more funding, to transform South Korea’s solar industry

"In Guyang-ri, a farming village of 70 households about 90 minutes south-east of Seoul, people gather for communal free lunches six days a week.

"The meals are funded by the village’s one-megawatt solar installation, which generates roughly 10m won ($6,800) in net profit each month."

Love this.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra is being refreshingly blunt: there is “no workaround” for Europe’s energy price crisis.

Hoekstra’s message? The only way out is through: more electrification, more solar, more wind, more storage, more grid interconnection — and all of it faster.

The same people who argue with climate scientists about who knows more about climate are naturally going to argue with the Pope about who knows more about Jesus.

Heat pumps are the most efficient heating technology ever invented.

They harvest and compress pre existing heat in the air, ground or water and transport it where it is needed.

That energy is all around us.

And it does not have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

BBC News leading all its bulletins on demands by former Government advisor Lord Robertson for more defence spending, without at any point mentioning his current paid senior role for US defence lobbyists

A notable divergence over twenty years from a middling position of 45% of Democrats worrying to 72% and 30% of Republicans now at at mere 6% demonstrates politicisation of climate change over this time: impact of disinformation and climate denial tactics?

Project 2025: The right-wing conspiracy to torpedo global climate action The GOP threatens to weaponize a potential second Trump term against any and all domestic climate action. But what happens in the United States doesn’t stay in the United States.

Since Viktor Orbán’s approach to governance in Hungary was cited by the Heritage Foundation as their blueprint for #Project2025 (kettering.org/the-global-d...) it seems like a good time to re-up this piece in Aug '24 piece in @thebulletin.org: thebulletin.org/2024/08/proj...

Signed:

Splendid lack of built-in obsolescence among the books on my bookshelves (though modern paperbacks do tend to lose their spine glue faster than old Penguins).

Experimental Fellowship with Bauhaus Earth Supporting Emerging Talents Shaping the Bauwende

"The programme includes financial support covering a monthly stipend in addition to the project-related expenses and production costs of up to €30,000, as well as technical support and collaborations with experts."
www.bauhauserde.org/projects/exp...

The effective federal corporate income tax rate:

1950: 50%
1990: 25%
2020: 13%

Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate.

That is how we will pay for it.

"Protesters in the Italian capital raised a shroud bearing the names of 21,000 children killed by the Israeli army during the genocide, in a demonstration condemning the ongoing massacres in #Gaza" (Mahmoud Al Shebrawy) #Italy