cowtan

@cowtan@mastodon.scot

Live in Edinburgh. Used to live in Fintry (the Stirling one) and was one of the founders of Fintry Development Trust. Spend a lot (too much?) time thinking about domestic heat decarbonisation. Work for Topolytics and Fintry Development Trust. A techie of some sort.

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RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Where do you live and how do you feel about it?

Obviously, don't tell me exactly where you live, no actual addresses please! You can be as vague as you like.

I live in Central Missouri in the U.S.

Pros:

This is an absolutely beautiful place, green rolling hills, lots of rivers, lakes, ponds, and natural springs, cool caves to explore.

Lots of farming here, so great access to quality fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy.

It's relatively inexpensive to live here compared with other states, because it's a "flyover".

I'm close enough to three major cities, that it's an easy day trip, and I'm about halfway to anywhere in the U.S.

We have one of the best Conservation departments in the U.S. and this is one of the few things that is a bipartisan issue. Lots of awesome nature programs that are free or cheap, state parks, conservation areas, bird watching, hunting, boating, foraging available to everyone.

Cons:

Yeah, it's a big one, it is a RED STATE, while a lot of the cities are blue, there is a large rural population, that votes red. Abortion is not legal here. People often vote against their own self interest.

While I'm not against responsible gun ownership, lots of people aren't responsible, and people have access to guns that definitely should not.

We have very few employee protections here, while the cost of living is relatively low compared with other places, it's taken years to get to a $12 minimum wage, and it's still not enough.

cowtan,

@RickiTarr Edinburgh, Scotland. Generally a great place to live both the city itself and Scotland as a whole.

The city is big enough to have a fair amount going on but small enough that it’s easy to get around. It’s incredibly beautiful as well, something you can get very used to.

Scotland generally is also great. Politically fairly liberal, more history than you can shake a haggis at and lovely landscapes with a couple of hundred mountains that can be ascended/descended in a day.

cowtan, to Scotland

#greyhounds #greyhoundsofmastodon #scotland #CastleDouglas #DumfriesAndGalloway #galloway

cowtan, to random

Good news…

Judge throws out case against climate activist who held sign on jurors’ rights https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/judge-throws-out-case-against-uk-climate-activist-trudi-warner-sign-jurors-rights?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Why is it that the people who brag about being "self-made" aren't?

If you turned out successful odds are you had help, a lot of it, and a good amount of luck on top of that. Imagine being so self absorbed that you don't give credit where credit is due.

cowtan,

@RickiTarr https://youtu.be/hD5f8GuNuGQ?si=5NR5bwZPr5br-tGm

cowtan,

@RickiTarr Yup. There is so much privilege built into the system and most of it’s hidden in plain sight.

cowtan, to random

This is well said. It’s only mentioned in passing but one of the worst of the recent developments is the power that corporations now have to bankrupt both organisations and individuals. The space (both literal and metaphorical) for peaceful protest has been reduced so protestors are having to use more extreme methods. #jso #juststopoil

Jail for holding a placard? Protest over the climate crisis is being brutally suppressed https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/climate-crisis-protest-activism-repression?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

elizabethtasker, to random
@elizabethtasker@mastodon.online avatar

I’m in the Science Museum in London… searching to find the tiny asteroid grain I smuggled in from Japan last summer!

… this is somewhat of a challenge. Grain is small. Museum big.

cowtan,

@elizabethtasker What’s the mirror for? Is it to get a better viewing angle?

cowtan,

@elizabethtasker Thanks. Glad it wasn’t too daft a question 🙂

cowtan, to random

Lovely article describing meeting an octopus - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/the-finger-touch-sent-shivers-down-my-spine-my-encounter-with-a-common-octopus

cowtan, to random

So, this article was signposted by @JamesGleick and looked like an interesting read but it’s behind a subscriber paywall. I don’t want to subscribe so didn’t read the article. I’ve no problem with people charging for their work - after all it’s what I do.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-owns-the-valet-booth-at-trump-tower

I always wonder in this situation, that no-one’s worked out how to do a micro-payments wallet so I can say I want to just read this article, here’s 50 cents (or whatever).

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

I learned two things today:

  1. Vegetable is a culinary term, and doesn't exist botanically.

  2. Some people say Vegetables are poison for humans, despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.

cowtan,

@RickiTarr I was remembering just the other day that a few years ago I met someone who had decided the only thing he was going to eat was steak.

I thought this was so weird I couldn't work out how to ask him why without revealing how unhinged I thought it was.

I do wonder what happened to him.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

It has been a minute since I've done a music question, and it seems like a fun day for it, so:

What is your Pump Yourself Up Kickass Song?

Here's one of my favorites:

https://youtu.be/3CGxxJeQ6Tk?si=1cVMNoZWQzNOSpOA

cowtan,

@RickiTarr https://youtu.be/77QqWVz4iEE?si=4xbzHasbm5FqX4cK

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

So, at first glance, I thought this was a 50 Shades type lady sex book, but upon further study, it's a very poorly named Jesus book!

My name is Heather Kay Dowling and this is the story God has chosen to tell through me, through my life: It is ugly yet beautiful, it is j hard and hateful yet gracious, and “When | was two my dad decided to cross a line...“He wants to trade you; all your junk and bad stuff for all of His good, the abused, had become the abuser... “You want me to go get a “It doesn't matter. He loves you anyway. her husband, | Bubba, are living their dream of small-town life in Kansas! i : K :‘ Together, with two dogs and six kids

cowtan,

@RickiTarr I honestly can make no sense of either the title or the cover picture to this book. They both hurt my head. Maybe it’s some kind of subliminal psychological torture.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

The French will talk about how Americans eat unsophisticated and unhealthy food, and then eat a baguette with a chocolate bar stuffed in it.

cowtan,

@RickiTarr When I was about 10, we went abroad on holiday for the first time. This was the early 70s in Scotland so was still a bit of a notable thing to do. Our first night in France we were staying in a hotel in a country town in Normandy. There are too many things to list that were strange and wonderful about this experience but the breakfast of fresh croissant with a bowl (a BOWL!) of hot chocolate was probably the most strange and the most wonderful.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

One of the things I love is when people refer to a character in their lives simply by a name, and then I get to guess whether they are talking about a child or a pet. This is especially fun when people name their pets people names.

cowtan,

@RickiTarr Took me a long time to realise a colleague was talking about her dog, not her daughter. When I say a long time I mean weeks if not months.

Robbins, to random
@Robbins@mastodon.scot avatar

Here's a thing -did the Post Office replace sub post masters and mistress when they sacked them if so did the Horizon system continue to dysfunction in those post offices or did Fujitsu "fix" the issues ? Or did post office use as excuse to close many sub post offices which they did throughout this period????

cowtan,

@Robbins @Wen One thing that's never been clear to me in anything I've read/listened to/watched on this is how culpable Fujitsu are. Or where the split in culpability between the Post Office and Fujitsu is. Lots of fingers are rightly being pointed at the Post Office but it feels as if Fujitsu are getting a bit of a free ride.

cowtan, to Scotland

#scotland #landscape #today

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Just to balance things out, tell me an artist, that as far as you know, seems to be a decent person, as well as a great artist!

cowtan,

@RickiTarr Peter Gabriel seems like a good guy both politically and personally.

kate, to random
@kate@fosstodon.org avatar

It’s 25 years since I built my first website. I’m not going to write a retrospective as I haven’t kept copies of my old sites, but I will say this: we’ve come a long way since the only way to put text in a rounded box was to create a table with four quarter-circle GIFs in the corner cells. (PNGs, div elements, and CSS were cutting-edge technologies not widely supported at the time.)

cowtan,

@kate oh how I miss those days. Not really but hacking html was fun at times.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

I, admittedly, curse way too much, but I just adore a faux curse. When I was a kid, one of my Mom's friends was a very proper Southern lady. Instead of saying "They think their shit don't stink" she would say, "Some people think they poo poo vanilla ice cream".

What is your favorite faux curse?

cowtan,

@val6bodie @plinth @RickiTarr I had always understood it was a contraction of ‘by our lady’. (I think I got this from one of the TH White ‘Once and Future King’ books.) it looks like this is probably wrong though. There’s an interesting discussion about the derivation on Wikipedia, if you haven’t already seen it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody

greenaspen, to random

“Disabled people must work from home to do ‘their duty”

Those are the words of one minister today, as the Government considers plans to force people with health issues into work while they're awaiting treatment, or risk losing benefits

#Petition here to stop this heartless mistreatment of vulnerable and fragile people

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/scrap-the-cruel-welfare-cut-plans?source=rawlink&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=rawlink&share=99c32817-91be-4f69-89e5-184465896dd0

cowtan,

@greenaspen I remember a time when someone called… checks notes… Theresa May warned her own party that they should avoid being seen as the ‘nasty party’.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Okay! You get to create your own personal music festival, name 3 Headliners!

cowtan,

@RickiTarr
Obviously far too many to choose from but I would be more than happy with

  • Sly and the Family Stone
  • Aretha
  • Stevie
    Ooft! Can you imagine it.
cowtan, to random

#today #greyhounds #greyhoundsofmastodon

A photo of the autumn countryside with a bright blue sky and a single track road in Galloway, Scotland.

helenczerski, to climate

It is completely ludicrous that anyone is still talking about hydrogen for home heating - it’s far less efficient, less safe, more expensive and less flexible than heat pumps. This report is the last nail in a coffin that is already more nail than coffin.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/21/hydrogen-boiler-home-heating-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#climate #hydrogen

cowtan,

@helenczerski It’s like it’s the zombie option. Regardless of the facts, it’s kept alive with a constant diet of money.

sysop408, to random
@sysop408@sfba.social avatar

I woke up at 7pm today. Tomorrow I'll probably get up at 9pm. Around this time next week, I'll be waking up at 7am.

This is normal for me. I have a rare-ish circadian rhythm disorder known as #Non24. My sleep cycle doesn't track with the sun. It's not at all rare amongst people who are blind, but it's rare amongst sighted people.

I also suspect it's actually more common than believed & there are people out there reputed to be lazy, immature, or erratic when they just can't sleep normally.

cowtan,

@sysop408 This post and the various replies to it are really interesting. My sleep is 24 circadian but my (adult) son has real problems keeping his conventional. I suspect he naturally tends to towards 26-28 hours and is easily knocked off the 24 hour cycle. Very interesting to read first hand accounts of other people with similar patterns.

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