Anti-fascist long before antifa was a thing. Passionate but despondent about the environment and the future of humanity. Trying to see the very best in everyone but struggling to understand or accept narcissists. The product of a "strange" upbringing. Kept sane (that's debatable) by music, the natural world, but most of all by the friendship and companionship of others. Fascinated by so much that the world has to offer. #Photography #Psychology #Music #Idealism #Autodidact
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2026-04-17T02:00:48Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 When I wake up tomorrow who will be toast? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Horrific story: npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 In a very real sense, with "approximately 10-12,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in the UK, primarily at RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, supporting air operations for Europe and serving as a crucial hub for the U.S. Air Force", Orwell's characterisation of the UK as "Airstrip One" seems to be about where we are, still a state tied firmly to a "Special Relationship" that is very clearly highly asymmetrical and which benefits the US and not Britain. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/01/06/scotland-caracas-and-the-trump-corollary/ npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Blue "Labour". The Overton Window has been decisively shifted, hasn't it! What a sad end (and I suspect it will be an end) to a once proud party that represented those who really earned the wealth of the country. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-wealth-tax-budget-b2893442.html npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 As someone who spent his working life in a profession where conflicts of interest were simply not permitted, I am profoundly mystified by the demonstrable ability that politicians have for convincing themselves that somehow the concept doesn't apply to them, that they, uniquely in this world, are somehow immune from the inevitable biases and self-serving that ensue. How easily they kid themselves. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Well that's the US off my list of countries I can visit, which will not be good news for my son in New Jersey... 😢 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - Next thing he will be wanting to use Comic Sans for all official documents...! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Wow, that's BOUND to work. A stroke of "genius" from Reform UK Ltd. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/farage-reform-uk-scotland-tartan-falkirk-b2879329.html npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Once again, the leader of "Reform ltd" is out to cause disharmony and dissent in Scotland. As a junior doctor I recall a colleague being asked by the judge in court what the acronym in an A&E patient's notes "TBR" meant. "The bum's rush", he muttered beneath his breath. "Would you repeat that for the court" he was instructed. Where Farage is concerned it needs to be said loud and clear... https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/12/03/farages-glasgow-dog-whistle/ npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I always refer to Zohran Mamdami, who made tackling the economic insecurity of so many New Yorkers the basis for his campaign. Labour, in trying to outdo Reform, have lost their way completely. Why vote for a "Reform - lite" that has been such a disappointment, when you can vote for the genuine (!) article. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 And pales into insignificance next to the money lost through tax avoidance and evasion. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 How utterly wasteful to have all those graduates and all of the vacancies in specialties and end up with expensively-trained medics unable to fill the posts. Some, no doubt, will go abroad, and others into graduate jobs of one sort or another; a great many will disappear into the general workforce with their ambitions unfulfilled through no fault of their own. What complete madness! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I hope that he enjoys his new accommodation when he takes up residence in HMP something-or-other. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/22/boris-johnson-took-four-days-off-as-nhs-warned-covid-could-overwhelm-system npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Sooner or later many of us will need care because we are no longer able to manage unsupported. It is past time for reform. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I hate "AI" and will have nothing to do with it. Intelligent it is not. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Not exactly new news (it was known more than 12 years ago that there was a strong correlation), but another disease that can be laid at the door of EBV. That is one dangerous viral infection. MS and a number of autoimmune diseases?https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/12/epstein-barr-virus-appears-to-be-trigger-of-lupus-disease-say-scientists npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Meanwhile, in the Sainsbury's car park this morning, someone put their clocks back further than they intended last week... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 😢 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 ...and how are they going to keep it intact when assaulted or moved on by random people and the police? Or countries could follow the example of Finland and actually house the homeless. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I have just finished "See What You Made Me Do" by Jess Hill - an often harrowing exposition of the facts behind Intimate Partner Violence and Coercive Control. She makes the case very strongly for a) believing children when they fight against being made to spend time with one (abusive) parent and b) a wholesale reform of the family courts and the training of those who provide advice (on things like "parental alienation") to those courts. It makes for difficult reading. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Oh dear! "A nightmare vision..."? Only in the fevered imaginations of an exploding Macwhirter and his ilk. Bring on the Celtic alliance, free from his "Anglo-Saxon England" with all of its painted roundabouts and flegs. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Indeed, and as Michael Marmot pointed out in 2010,the Borough of Westminster has some of the the starkest disparities in the UK with consequent huge disparities in health and life expectancy. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 @npub165w…lfr7 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Proud to belong to this group of young (at heart) radicals. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 That's a sobering read, and one that doesn't bode well for the health of the planet or for the future of humanity. I have a great deal of time for Kate Raworth and her co-workers; her work ought to be compulsory reading for politicians and economists. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 At the moment I'm reading "See What You Made me do" by Jess Hill, a book that, as it says on the cover, is about power, control and domestic abuse. It's a slow and difficult read. Then today I saw this in the Grauniad. It too is hard going. I wonder sometimes whether men in our society will ever come to grips with their responsibility to end this. Just now I'm not optimistic. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/13/these-men-think-theyve-done-nothing-wrong-philosopher-tried-understand-gisele-pelicot-rapists npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 After a long day yesterday, there's a fourth thing - the opportunity to sit down now and reflect on the goodness and generosity of others with Astor Piazzolla on the radio and a book on anarchism on my knee.., 🥰 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 #threegoodthings : npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Oh the irony is off the scale this morning. The King (not my king) is, according to the news this morning, going to appear on UK television to tell us all about living sustainably. I'll believe that the day he renounces the homes and palaces, gives up helicopter travel and moves into a modest home on a council estate with his bidie-in. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I hope that your wife is now better. End user experience is good, but always better avoided. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 As an addendum, I am profoundly aware that a moment's inattention in the workshop, two visits by a crew of ambulance technicians and one of paramedics, a ride to hospital, emergency surgery, three CT scans, Parenteral nutrition, and two weeks on High Dependency and another ward would, had I been in the US, have bankrupted me. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I was discharged yesterday from hospital after emergency surgery and a couple of weeks recovery. The two highly competent surgeons were from the Middle East, I had nurses from Zimbabwe, India, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere. The crew doing the CT scan were from Cameroon, whilst behind the scenes were countless others without whose good-natured expertise the Scottish NHS would cease to function. It is no exaggeration that today I recognise that I owe my life to them all. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Oh FFS this is a world I nearly departed just over a fortnight ago, and now I'm on the mend it's worse than ever 😢😢😢 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Threatened by quiet non-violent "Gandhian" protest, and in the mean time those who protest violently about "Immigrants", threaten communities, threaten to burn down hostels and paint the flag of St. George on road furniture get a free pass. The world is topsy turvy. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Sympathise with their view - absolutely not. Empathy - being able, as far as it is humanly possible, to "enter their world and to try to understand" is still achievable. Without that we run the risk of making judgements without understanding. The difficulty is in being able to truly empathise without being drawn in. Friedrich Nietzsche put it well: "When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you". npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 A radical kills one worshipper on the streets of the UK and we are, quite correctly, asked to consider the grief of the Jewish community. Israel and their Zionist government murders thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in their (appropriately named) "offensive" in Gaza. Where are the calls to consider the grief and anger of the Palestinian diaspora? Are these not people too, do they not bleed and mourn? We have entirely lost any idea of a common humanity. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 ...and amen to that! I remember a time when there was a thing called "constructive dialogue" that relied upon being able to take the perspective of "the other". npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I'm not sure what it is that sets Mastodon apart, but given the lack of algorithmic content promotion is what largely sets it apart from social media in general, I suspect that has a significant role to place. Conversation, whilst perhaps partly siloed, (aren't our social lived IRL also characterised by silos?) is generally and genuinely respectful, thoughtful and appreciative. The antithesis of life on the bigger platforms. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 My son brought me a pair of Bluetooth headphones to my hospital bed, and helped me connect them. Listening to Anton Webern's Langsamer Satz and, like Arnold Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, it's absolutely gorgeous music. How could I not have discovered it sooner? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Do others who are now "getting on in years" feel, as I do, that they have an increasingly marginal place in a society that is moving in a direction that feels as though it's leaving the behind? I don't say this out of nostalgia for a mythical past, I've no emotional attachment to my past, but rather that I see a world in which I feel alienated, that my beliefs about mutuality, empathy and community are being trashed systematically by people who believe in nothing but wealth and power. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 @npub1prm…a9wj @npub1m0j…qy4f npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 It's a descent into the madness of what is already a low-grade civil war, perhaps a continuation of the one of 1861-65. My understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that the ideology of the Confederacy was founded on a belief in the supremacy of the "white races" (and the right to own and abuse slaves). My fear is that the current violence, encouraged by white supremacists like Fuentes, Kirk and Trump, will escalate into a full-blown civil war. Trump is despicable. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 No-one should die in gun violence but the phrase "Live by the sword..." does seem to be appropriate here. It's just crazy that the USA, with a population of 340 million should have around 400 million guns in private hands. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/charlie-kirk-shot-utah npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I scroll down my feed and get angrier every minute. There's enough food in the world to feed everyone adequately. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 But as long as the GDP goes up and the wealthy get wealthier, then all's right with the world? Shame on politicians and the wealthy npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - Dot com all over again but even bigger this time. I don't know what they'll do with all the left-over data centres, but perhaps that will be the least of our problems. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 The wiping out of the entire indigenous population of Tasmania was carried out systematically by Colonel Arthur after whom Port Arthur was named (a bleak dreadful penal colony for convicts shipped there, often for trivial offences) . British colonial history is a catalogue of similar shameful acts. The shame we should feel is a stark contrast with today's brutish British exceptionalism from a reinvigorated racist far right. https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-evidence-for-the-tasmanian-genocide-86828 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I was thinking particularly about people like Johnson and Gove, but it seems to me that when these people are in charge of so much that affects the well-being of so many of us, then the very least we ought to expect is that there are basic competencies which every member should achieve. In the case of work (e. g. Clacton) then there must be regular surgeries for constituents. In other places, the need for a mechanism to "retire" those who are no longer fit for office is glaringly obvious. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Politics is a weird business. Take airline pilots. Long training, regular line checks to demonstrate competence, restrictions on alcohol and drugs, and a professional approach to their work ( with a duty to report concerns to a regulatory body). Politics? None of that. No need to prove your mental fitness for the job, little or no training, no way to weed out underperformers, drink at subsidised rates in bars provided for your use, and don't mention the (alleged) coke habits of some members... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 If you live in the UK have a concealed phone that you keep for emergencies, one that you would rather not have others know about, then it would be sensible to turn it off tomorrow afternoon. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/emergency-alert-drill-mobile-phone-b2821517.html npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Around Christmas last year (thus not a New Year resolution) I decided I would read a hundred books in 2025. Like you I read avidly as a teenager. All kinds of things got in the way and I forgot the enormous pleasure that reading can give. Now on my 80th book. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 How could we have forgotten so much about the events of 1935 and the subsequent decade when there are still those of 90 or over who remember (and when there is so much documented evidence)? I am not sanguine, not at all... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 At the moment, and as I see it, Trump is destroying everything in the world that I hold dear - human (and especially Women's) rights, enlightenment, science, the rule of law, environmentalism, tolerance, fairness, even optimism. We will be left with a dystopia, a wasteland and only a few wealthier billionaires to show for it. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 The "I support Palestine Action" are those on the right side of History (and Yvette Cooper is on the wrong one). There is a genocide being carried out in plain sight by the Israeli Government in Gaza and anyone that can't see that this is utterly abhorrent has no place in government in the UK. If government and police think that arresting those justified in protesting will make the issue magically go away, then they are as wrong as they were about the "Poll Tax" protests. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-protests-palestine-action-arrests-terror-ban-live-updates-b2804813.html npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/114/987/387/274/515/905/original/b56655d20a53511a.jpg npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 As one who has travelled to work, both in this country and abroad, but who has in his seventy-odd (seventy odd) years taken, let me see, one honeymoon, two foreign holidays, three trips to visit a son in the US, and a couple of days stopover in Iceland and Malaysia, this article resonates. I prefer travelling with the mind, with the imagination. I'm told I ought to learn solo travelling, but it holds few attractions. Am I really that boring? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 This strikes home. I struggle with the callous inaction of governments every day, (and still more so with the actions of governments that supply the arms that prolong the suffering of the Palestinian people). https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/08/05/gaza-is-also-a-war-on-the-human-instinct-for-compassion/ npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I'm off to my much-needed bed. Before I go, I'd like to express my admiration for Iceland and its leaders. I could live happily with people like this... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 already looking windy out to the west of Ireland... https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-8.61,54.07,3257 npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - crackpot "journalist". "An eye for beauty"? Trump the aesthete? Tawdry gold-plated everything. The man majors on vulgarity. Someone please call the men in white coats for Simon Jenkins... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Way too little and way too late. It was indefensible months and months ago. Now it is quite plainly genocidal and a war crime. We (rightly) were in uproar over Srebrenica and Rwanda, but somehow only now are we timidly saying to the Netenyahu regime "Would you please mind not killing so many people by shooting, bombing and starving them". https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gaza-palestine-israel-starvation-aid-b2796196.html npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 A a child I knew of the horrors of the Ghettos and the concentration camps. It was hard not to know of them; memories were fresh. Then, we recoiled from the horrors that were inflicted by the Nazis. In my mind, there is not the tiniest sliver of a difference between what was done then and what is being done now. The fact is that several nations of the world are permitting this. The world could stop it now - and doesn't. It MUST be stopped. NOW. Before more die. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/israel-gaza-starvation-humanitarian-groups-letter npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 My current book. I naively believed I understood that the world is largely conceived by men for men. This is eye-opening. Thanks to Nairn Public Library for having it in a prominent position on their shelves. #bookstodon npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 A government that is quite unable to tolerate dissent or criticism is weak beyond belief. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Yet again "It doesn't have to be this way" springs to my lips, this time in response to John Harris' distressing article about the way that we (society) treats the learning-disabled and, all too often, those with physical differences too. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I have, this late in life, come to love the work of anthropologists who, looking broadly at both current or recent communities and those in the deeper past say that "It doesn't have to be this way, that communities and civilisation can be ordered differently, in a way that ensures a decent quality of life for all". Perhaps standing out is the much missed David Graeber. It simply doesn't have to be this way. We prioritise the wrong (capitalist) things and give power to the wrong people. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Leakey's second hand bookshop in Inverness. The largest second hand bookshop in Scotland. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Ten o'clock in the evening and still light enough to pick myself a handful of cherries from the tree as a treat and reward for good behaviour. Well, maybe not that last bit! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - "Trickle down", like the Laffer Curve, bears no relation to real life. It was a way to justify the unjustifiable huge remuneration increases at the top (just as the Laffer Curve was simultaneously arguing that lower taxation would increase the tax take overall. It is the economics of fairy tales. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Once again. It is becoming a habit of this government to attack the rights and downgrade the welfare of its most vulnerable of citizens. All predicated on the "no magic money tree" mantra. It's inexcusable for any government to propose such an attack on those least able to defend themselves, but for a "Labour" government it is beyond belief. It's long past time for them to reform taxation. A decent first step would be to tax investment income at the same rate as earnings. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 As I watch the behavior of the leaders of the US and more often than not, the UK, I am reminded of the words of Hannah Arendt, someone who saw more barbarism than most, and who recognised its root causes. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 What has been done and is being done to the Palestinian people in Gaza in the full view of the world is almost certainly the most inhumane murderous thing that has been done by a nation in my lifetime. To call it warfare is obscene. It is the greatest of ironies that there has been nothing like this since the Holocaust. And we (the government and much of the media) in the UK are complicit, connive, assist, and provide cover for the people who do this. We all should be PA. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Could we not rather retire Charlie and the monarchy and retain the train? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I have long thought that sortition, as a principle, holds promise in drawing politicians from the widest possible demography. Your proposals make a great deal of sense (I would expect nothing else! 🙂) npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Behind the "getting people back to work" lie Victorian concepts of the lazy and workshy, and some nebulous belief in the virtue of working. The disabled just have to "try harder", as though most aren't trying far harder than the able already. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Signed and contributed. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 The other one that puzzles me (and neuroscientists) is that (as Susan Blackmore suggests) the delay in processing visual input differs across the different pathways used and yet somehow binding it all back together the brain presents us with a smooth representation of the outside world. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - it has always fascinated me that there is a (roughly) 0.5 second delay in neural processing and that everything that we perceive is thus time-shifted by half a second. And yet we catch balls in flight, play tennis and, as you say, tend not to trip over objects. The whole area of consciousness and human cognition seems to me to be full of these strange things that I just struggle to get my head around! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Strangely, I was saying that to someone only on Friday. The only true reality is that singular point in time "right now", all else is encoded in memory or imagined about a future that is yet to happen. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Perhaps time to post this as a reminder that there is far far more that unites the diversity of human beings around the globe than separates us. Those in governments who "other" people who are "not the same as us" play a dangerous and inhuman game. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Doing the same thing in the expectation of a different result? Of course they'll claim it's not the same thing, but to all intents and purposes it will suffer from the same flaws and will end up costing the state more than if the projects were publicly funded. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 In 1967, I was 18 years old and there was a Labour PM in Downing Street. He refused an offer of financial assistance from the then President Johnson in return for the deployment of British troops in Vietnam. Now there is a Labour PM in Downing Street, I am a year or two older, and the possibility of UK military assistance - this time in the Middle East - is being mooted. Time for Keir Starmer to grow a spine like Harold Wilson and tell the US that we'll sit this one out... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 The descent into authoritarian fascism is accelerating, isn't it. When I was younger I used to wonder if I had lived in 1930s Germany. Now I know what I would do (have done). What I didn't expect that another dose of the infection would come along quite so soon. I had hoped that there might have been some immunity after the last one. It seems not. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - Thank you. I love that! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Some pictures just take your breath away... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 How long before the US needs a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" process to heal the wounds inflicted and the divisions caused by Trump and his MAGA supporters (if indeed the wounds can be healed)? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 It's the first year that the wisteria has flowered properly. It has take a dozen years to get her, but it was worth the wait. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Really? And my head zips up the back. In front of the world the IDF murders and starves and the UK govt. claims it's not happening? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 The case against capital punishment is also strongly reinforced. If I understand correctly, he has already served much longer than his original sentence demanded. This is a horrendous miscarriage of justice. There have been far too many and I suspect that there are others languishing in jails up and down the country who ought to be free. There are also those on indeterminate sentences locked up for years for comparatively trivial offences. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 A reminder to the current leader of the Labour Party from one of the former leaders. In case he might have forgotten what the party stands for npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 An "Alliance of Celtic States", perhaps, together with a United Ireland back in the EU? npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Long past time. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 - if, when perhaps, I need the services of an oncologist, then let it be someone like Ranjana Srivastava. I love the way that she makes the time and has the curiosity to enquire further, to have that sense that says "Take a pause, look again" and to treat her patients as people. Being busy and rushed is, in this world, a convenient excuse but it's just that, an excuse. Above all, she listens to her patients. I feel that's an increasingly rare quality. She's a treasure. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I love woodlands like this - here be mystical and magical things...! npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I detest sycophants: npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Whatever their political convictions, or whatever part of the political spectrum they represent, I don't think that I have EVER seen a party leader with less political nous than Starmer. When Spitting Image used to portray John Major as colourless and grey - well he was positively radiant with colour compared with the current Labour leader. And he faced down the "Bastards" in his own party... npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I came across this today and it has caused me mental distress. If I understand it correctly, there will always be an infinity that is greater than infinity! "Doesn't compute..." npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 Radio 3 "Words and Music " themed around Bagpuss. Wonderful end to a good day. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 ...and I did go for that (mossy muddy) walk in the woods. After reading a little more this morning. And then a walk around a small loch, a spontaneous decision to have lunch out where a woman was singing Joan Baez songs that I hadn't heard in fifty years, and then a wander around a second-hand bookshop. Rebooted. npub18atlvp9mfttz3vdlrva79lua3ackdf8hg3ckdv27rtg5twjyy44svesy47 Just Tom... 🐁 I think tomorrow that, if the weather is not too bad, I'll turn off my phone and take myself for a walk in the woods. I am in need of a factory reset. Or an entirely new OS. The old one seems to have been corrupted somehow and has all kinds of glitches. 😢
