Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org

UK elections are on Thursday, and in a few months, Nigel Farage has raised his Reform party from 6 to now 17 percent.

Yep… that Farage, who promised UK voters a land of milk and honey, if they voted for his Brexit. And now that Brexit has proven to be a ticket to economic disaster and endless bureaucracy, Farage is telling the Brits, that its all the immigrants’ fault.

17 percent have fallen for this conman.

It is a mystery, how humans could ever become the dominant species on this planet.

A San Francisco store is shipping LGBTQ+ books to places where they are banned https://www.npr.org/2024/06/30/nx-s1-5024108/lgbtq-book-bans-san-francisco-store-ships-books-to-where-they-are-banned?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The sky this evening just after sunset was mind-blowing. I had to quickly grab just the phone.
There had been a thunderstorm
earlier, and there was a very colourful rainbow to the East.

#sunset

The Internet Archive is hiring a Director of Platform Engineering. In my opinion, this is the most crucial and important position we have had open at the company in some time. The right person in this position is not just helpful, but a make or break key between success and merely acceptable levels of technological advance for the archive. It's a non-profit level of pay but the work is world changing.

https://app.trinethire.com/companies/32967-internet-archive/jobs/91807-director-of-platform-engineering

“A fisherman who was fishing east of the Farallon Islands (just outside of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California) spotted a whale who was fully entangled and bound in a fishing net. The fisherman radioed for help and within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that the whale was so badly tangled that the only way to save her was to dive in, cut the ropes and untangle her…. a very dangerous proposition as one slap of the tail

The Hartlepool headteacher trying to find beds for 10,000 sleep-deprived pupils https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jun/30/the-hartlepool-headteacher-trying-to-find-beds-for-10000-sleep-deprived-pupils?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #worldnews #guardian

Today in 1990, 34 years ago: East and West Germany merge their economies.

#OnThisDay

Oh, this is good: Microsoft waives its copyright to anything it publishes on the web.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/28/24188391/microsoft-ai-suleyman-social-contract-freeware

#microsoft #copyright #AI

The better half is watching Star Trek Prodigy with the kids, and gently indoctrinating them into the nerd life. 🥰

Today let's focus on what YOU can do to make the world around you a better place instead of waiting for some old men to do it...

Get active in your community. Donate your time and money to places that help the disadvantaged.

Create kindness throughout your day. Open a door for someone. Give a deserved compliment. Offer to help a neighbor with a chore. Help carry a load. Don't just be a kind person. Actively seek out opportunities to put kindness into action.

Be a helper. Give of yourself.

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can’t reread a phone call. - Liz Carpenter

Thames Water board approved £150m payout hours before funding U-turn:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/28/thames-water-board-150m-dividend-payout-funding-u-turn

The irony is not lost on me that the Internet Archive went out of its way to acquire the physical versions of millions of books and loan them out carefully and in a limited way, and is facing a near-extinction-level event over it, while for-profit and VC-backed companies are just stealing people’s content and making up excuses to validate the bad behavior.

Top scientists turning down UK jobs over ‘tax on talent’, says Wellcome boss:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jun/29/top-scientists-turning-down-uk-jobs-over-tax-on-talent-says-wellcome-boss

There is a huge untapped market of #retired technology folks. I'm curious if anyone knows of any groups the help match up tech talent with #opensource or #nonprofit organizations. Please reshare for reach.

Today in:
✅Cool science
✅Smart design
✅Good news

https://theconversation.com/our-frog-saunas-could-help-save-endangered-species-from-the-devastating-chytrid-fungus-231605

The most important thing to understand about the US is that a faction of disgruntled elites staged, in essence, a revolt of the rich against the poor and imposed a system of unfettered exploitation, starting in the 1970s.

After the Second World War, US elites had implemented a system of programs and institutions designed to return to the working class a larger share of the wealth that class produced. They wanted to avoid the mistakes that had led to the rise of fascism and global destruction of the war; they wanted to give the working class fewer reasons to overthrow those elites.

But not everyone in the elite was happy about having to share wealth with the workers who produced it, and as the years passed the historical memory of the war faded from salience. So we had the neoliberal turn, launched first by Nixon and solidified by Reagan.

Americans are living in the crumbling ruins of that successful but ultimately catastrophic revolt of the rich.