Voltaire said it's for the best
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2026-09-27T12:51:30Z Event JSON
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"content": "{\"name\":\"Dan Hatton\",\"about\":\"Voltaire said it's for the best\\nBetter not put it to the test\\nJack Daniels\\nI didn't buy\\nAfter I promised, now I feel like dying\\n\\npronouns: he/him\\n\",\"website\":\"https://mas.to/@only_ohm\",\"picture\":\"https://media.mas.to/accounts/avatars/109/344/205/507/091/146/original/2611252a3e54b39b.png\",\"banner\":\"https://media.mas.to/accounts/headers/109/344/205/507/091/146/original/676f58dc3c82cde0.png\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \"}" ,
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Last Notes npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Just checking, though: when Louis Armstrong (or Johnnie Ray) says "you coax the blues right out of the horn", they're not talking about either of these instruments, right? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton And would that be the final straw that leads the unions to go looking for a better party to give their political fund money to? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton As the old saying goes, conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: that there should be an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect. I suggest fascism is what happens when conservatives become confident enough to proceed without bothering to pretend there's still a meaningful rule of law. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Rather direct interpretive dance choice for "got to go down" there. #TOTP #1999Watch npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Having worked in climate-adjacent research for a while, I'm aware that there absolutely are such things as vexatious and frivolous FoI requests, and that they are a real problem, but I don't suppose those are the ones the government will attempt to limit. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Love the way the compilers of the list couldn't bring themselves to use the word "Gimp". npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton The article says "by a narrow margin". I rather fear that, if the UK were still part of the EU, the vote would have gone the other way. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton The counter-argument to that is that, once the whole policy package becomes public, it's an immutable fait accompli, so if you want the discussion to make any difference, it has to happen before that. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Let's be honest, councils are in financial trouble because central government has cut their block grants to the bone, banned them from raising council tax beyond 5% pa, and loaded them up with expensive statutory duties that can't possibly be satisfied within the resulting budgetary constraints - it's nothing to do with which party happens to hold the majority locally. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I'm certainly not one of the "thin out the numbers of universities" mob - I suggested the consultancy/lobbying route as a pick-me-up, not as a put-me-down. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton My most minority-of-one opinion: the English and Welsh universities should have seen the writing on the wall in 2011 and pivoted away from teaching and research to focus largely on consultancy and lobbying. Instead, a bunch of innumerate managers decided that they could achieve break-even or revenue surplus if they increased student numbers enough under the new fees regime, which always flew in the face of basic arithmetic. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Sounds remarkably similar to Will Hutton's prescription from 1995. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Oof. OTOH, I've currently got an old laptop that sits in my spare bedroom connecting to a cloud storage service to do an offsite data backup, and when I had a quick look at the progress monitor this morning, it was giving an estimated time remaining of 10^13 days, which is about 20 times the age of the universe. (It's now dropped to 1 hour 50 minutes, so I think the main thing we learn is not to rely on the estimated time remaining calculation.) npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Are you claiming that your use of the word "begging" in your original post was consistent with the precise legal definition that applies in your home jurisdiction? Feel free to answer either on the basis of the natural and ordinary meaning of domestic legislation, or on the basis of that meaning as modulated by the Strasbourg jurisprudence. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Assuming the current outbreak of fascism in the US won't last forever, in any case I think we need to ditch the idea that executives doing lots of in-person interccontinental travel is essential to trade and prosperity, because there's no way we can meet our climate goals without dramatically resucing the amount of aviation that goes on. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Ah, here it is: npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton What was it Douglas Adams said about "standby"? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I've been on here for a while, but in this new era of having my real name as my display name, it's finally time to write an #introduction post. I spend most of my time being a full-time #carer for an unwell member of my family. Before that, I was a lecturer in mechanical and marine #engineering at #PlymouthUniversity, and before that a postdoc researching various bits of #environmentalPhysics and #engineeringFluidMechanics at the #UniversityOfCambridge and #UniversityCollegeLondon... npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Hands, Read! #TOTP #1979Watch npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Or indeed the manufacturer-provided keyboard app. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I don't know: do Ensemble now get to claim the credit when (not if) the policy actually makes life better for people? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Bloody hell. You'd think if anyone would have respect for the evidentiary dangers of forging images, it'd be history buffs, but apparently not. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton The "other sources" possibly being the previous week's episode, as @npub178a…5e34 suggests. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I don't think much of a portion of that revenue finds its way to publishers' employees. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Upper limits or lower limits? #TOTP npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I wonder how many of the regulars on here would be outed as former audience members? #TOTP npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton @npub1xw9…75ln npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I'd say its greatest failure is inherent in its terms of reference: that it measures the budget deficit by the rate of change of public sector net debt, not by (minus) the rate of change of public sector net worth, thus strongly disincentivizing any public-sector investment. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton ... Some of those limits take the form "in order to wield power, you must go through a proper formal procedure"; some take the form "no matter how proper your procedure, there are certain basic human rights you're not allowed to breach". I think in this case, I'd argue that the Home Secretary overstepped both the limits of the first kind set out in the Terrorism Act 2000, and the limits of the second kind set out in the Human Rights Act 1998. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton @npub12pw…zvxn npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Yay Billie! Since last week's #TOTP fest, we've had much hand-wringing over an AI fake image of you at a TV shoot with Paul McGann. And getting back to the #misogyny, as is the wont of AI image generators, it had substantially shortened the skirt of your last-seen on-screen costume. #1998Watch #DoctorWho npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton @npub17tv…q7ve npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Where the text of legislation is ambiguous, the courts will sometimes (albeit rarely) take account of the statements in Parliament of the sponsoring minister when they decide how to interpret that legislation. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Hmm... I wonder if new towns founded properly, along Ebenezer Howard's garden city principles, could actually themselves be a vehicle for reshaping the financial services sector in service of the public good: garden city LAs as universal landlords of commercial property in their areas choosing which banks get premises based on those banks' service to the public. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton That will be a decision for the court, not for the Home Office: see <https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-arrests-what-happens-next-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-breadth-of-britains-counter-terrorism-laws-263080>. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Ideal in the workplace. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton What's unusual this time is that polling projections indicate that PR for the next general election is clearly in the self-interest of the party in government. I think that's only ever been the case once before (lead-up to 1997). Eventually, Labour are going to get into enough of a panic to do it; the question is whether they leave that moment too late to invoke section 2 of the Parliament Act and override any objections in the Lords. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I use that weird archaic wording precisely because there is a precedent for it already on the statute book, so if I'm "compromising the sovereignty of Parliament", it's already compromised and has been for nearly 500 years. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton 2 Insert an anti-repeal clause in the Human Rights Act, modelled on the one in the Treason Act 1540: "It shall be high treason for any person, by word or by deed, to procure or do any thing to the repeal of this Act" (you'd probably need similar clauses to prevent amending or disapplying the HRA, too). npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton To be clear, there are two things the present government *could* do to reduce the risks: npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Also: is that "followed all legal rules currently in force", or "followed all legal rules the govt is currently legislating in the Renters' Rights Bill"? Because I have a feeling she may not have done the latter. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton The discounts weren't (at least routinely) enough to drive the sale price below the replacement build cost, though, were they? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I think I might argue that it wasn't RtB per se that worsened the housing crisis, but the refusal to allow the capital receipts from RtB to be used to build new council houses. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton It's well over a decade since I attempted in-person record shopping in Cambridge, but a quick web search reveals a few outlets, most of which appear to be still-extant within the last year *and* to open on Sundays - The Cherry Pit on King Street, Reliable Record Cafe on Mill Road, Fopp on Sidney Street, Lost in Vinyl on Magdalene Street, Pete's Music stall on the Market (that last one probably not Sundays). npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Under-recruitment of language teachers in turn perhaps being related to the decision to scrap compulsory selection of at least one modern foreign language at GCSE now being long enough ago that pupils affected by it are old enough to be becoming teachers. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton The main difficulty, at least for me, is in detecting whether or not the phone is successfully squared off in the first stage - and if you don't know whether it's squared off, you might as well tilt and roll it because it's as likely to make the squareness better as it is to make it worse. Maybe easier to square it up in software after taking the photo: GIMP has a 3D transform tool that will do it? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton I think, when it comes to protection of basic human rights, it's a mistake to try and "navigate the current debates" - the aim has to be to place them beyond debate. I've suggested before inserting an anti-repeal clause in the Human Rights Act, mirroring the one in the Treason Act 1540: "It shall be high treason for any person, by word or by deed, to procure or do any thing to the repeal of this Act". npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton LibDems abstained: mostly by the "did not vote" method, six of them by the "walk through both lobbies" method. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton AIUI the proscription requires an affirmative resolution of each house of Parliament to proceed, so we'll at least be able to see which way they vote. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Also allow Covid to run rampant so Long Covid renders an ever-increasing portion of the population unfit for military service. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Right, but... if I were a BoE spokesperson and I said, "no no, our plan was to suppress growth only to a point just short of recession, but we were blindsided by a sudden and unexpected fiscal tightening by the Treasury", could you easily refute that argument? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton @npub12pw…zvxn npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton It's worse than that: having this attitude means UK ministers are forced to hope for the election of governments in EU countries that will be willing to separate the four freedoms, and allow full access to sell stuff into the single market without regulatory harmonization/ECJ jurisdiction/freedom of movement - which means the far right. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Or (c) Build a different coalition of voters that makes it possible to win without the support of voters who have dipped their hands in the blood of racist causes and racist candidates. Here in the UK, the window for doing that is getting very narrow indeed, but I think it might be a bit wider in the US. npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Oh, you think there'll be functioning law courts in your dotage do you? npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Just ordered a new mobile phone handset because my old one had undergone total functionality failure. For the second consecutive such occasion, I thought I might quite fancy LineageOS. And for the second consecutive such occasion, I found there was no overlap whatsover between the models on LineageOS's supported devices list and the models that are available to purchase. By way of postmortem, is that normal? #foss #openSource npub1ffs9l5ppla472c25amgqanj0n78g68f72k4u7ccs7cclkjdtsjeqnvrmhs Dan Hatton Of course, I had to check to see if I could do that. I can't, and now I have a stitch.
