low. see the article - they're just trying to get the EC to respond to our letter.
Irish writer and keynote speaker: let's rewild the internet! Dog lady. Forest bather. She/her http://www.mariafarrell.com https://buttondown.email/MariaFarrell
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low. see the article - they're just trying to get the EC to respond to our letter.
YESSSSSS
yes! honestly the main factor was just that this was not a very hot and dry summer in London, so fewer plants died than usual. I do enjoy pottering around with my watering can to help them along.
Without speaking for other human rights advocates, such as @zoejardiniere.bsky.social and @laurenhstarkey.bsky.social et al, but I think it's safe to say we are all knackered. I know there are good Labour MPs out there, we need to hear from them against this government's incessant hostile policies.
while I'm away my urban garden is flourishing. it is RAMPANT. apples, clematis, climbing rose, lavendar, daisies; all flourishing. god those japanese anemones wrap their blush pink petals around my heart and squeeze it
honestly I'd (also) say it was down to our teacher, not the curriculum itself.
tbf in rural Ireland, same time, for Leaving Cert, I remember us talking about Heathcliff's race - it was the 80s so probably we said 'colour'. It wasn't a race conversation as we'd frame it now, but the extra element of his difference was part of the mix.
I hope this speech says what, when, how and how much € the EC will do to build Europe's digital sovereignty by - enforcing competition law - identifying scale issues in the Euro stack, and - setting out a plan to address them - embracing open source, modular solutions, not new EU monopolies
Advocacy works! Just ask @mariafarrell.bsky.social and @ianbrown.tech
The European Commission cannot be allowed to get away with its pre-ordained, broken process to hire Europe's most important data protection official. We will pull on every lever we can to protect Europe's ability to defend privacy and the rule of law. 👊
the eu ombuds has opened an investigation into why the EC has failed to answer a letter from me, ian brown and douwe korf about a skewed hiring process for the new edps which is apparently going to result in the appointment in a commission official from a dg the edps is investigating. article below
you two are both lovely and it's the situation that's shit. your interaction made me feel a lot of feelings. ❤️
thanks for spotting this, Mark!
The European Commission cannot be allowed to get away with its pre-ordained, broken process to hire Europe's most important data protection official. We will pull on every lever we can to protect Europe's ability to defend privacy and the rule of law. 👊
tbf two absolute banger there!
"moving countries isn’t really about geography. It’s about patience and persistence, and the slow magic of weaving yourself into the fabric of a place." ❤️
Jo Walton has a new novel. This is an Event! @bluejo.bsky.social
@mariafarrell.bsky.social seems like a podcast made for you: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
they have such a 'broadcast' mode of communication. sure, just spray out the manufactured content central office gave you and that'll 'shape the narrative'. ffs.
It's utterly sickening.
It's been over a year and the ONE THING Labour could do to "give children a start" is CUT THE CHILD BENEFIT CAP Everything else is PR. 1/4 of teenagers in poor families can't take GCSEs in languages, nutrition, art, even PE, because they can't afford the costs. Grow a spine, Labour. Disgusting.
"entirely groundless" This is how public discourse is being is being debased. The GFA expressly requires access to court in Northern Ireland for ECHR. But what Straw says is not tested, just repeated, and so a "both sides" "debate" is created. The actualité drowns. Sad to watch in real time.
oh yes, thanks! I'd just spotted this on my player yesterday and queued it right up for this morning's walk.
Vitally important thread.
I don't disagree that genres have lifespans, but I think this might be (in part) an outside job: the exhaustion of technological progress, the refusal of mainstream politics to aim for a better tomorrow: that has all helped suck energy (and joy) from SF, and is why horror's best suited to the now.
older sisters are truly ethical people who always know best, including when we convince our tiny sibs that sucking on that lemon will be the most delicious thing they've EVER eaten.
It's what we call an Irish picnic. Traditionally eaten in the backseat of the car while bickering with your many siblings 'you're touching me' 'no! you're touching me!'
oh gods......
oh my dude we've had autumn for 10 days already in the south west of Ireland (I'm so bummed! I was counting on 2 more weeks of post-work swims). herewith today's 'beach walk' pic.
It is superb. I even managed to read it while my husband was deployed. Not sure if I could again, though.
it will be great when it happens, though.
Excellent backgrounder on what is happening in Indonesia at the moment. 👇
“Although Microsoft is used up and down the UK by police and law enforcement bodies, so far only SPA – and now Police Scotland – have asked the important questions: Where does our data go? Do you have a map or data flow model? What assurances can you give us around our regulatory DPA Part 3 needs?"
thank you! xx
now that is the way to organise things!
strongly agree. it made no sense whatever, on any level - personal, political, genetic - and was just so stupid and dull. If I don't care about the people, and don't believe in the politics, then I have zero fucks to give about how the flitter works. A kind editor would have said 'nope!'.
yes, I'd forgotten the thing about his endings. honestly the whole postscript story in this one stretched credulity on multiple fronts - the politics were George Lucas levels of bad. (why on earth wouldn't all the children have inter-bred from day one?!). If only he'd finished at 500 pages.
I get on it one of these days. likely quite soon as I seem to be on a bit of a tear!
floofmeister in receipt of his love
I'd not read one since the first in the baroque cycle. Oddly enough, despite not enjoying whole swathes of this one, I think I might nonetheless resume reading the back catalogue.
have neither read PHM nor have plans to, but I'll definitely be watching Ryan Gosling in it!
good to know!
paws crossed for it! (btw I recently renewed my passport and genuinely couldn't believe how smooth the process was)
yes, it's crucial. now that I WFH permanently I don't need the escape factor as much but I absolutely could not do normal office employment, other people, meeting blah blah, and public face 8 hours a day without a real break. (frankly I can no longer do it at all)
ha! yes. it definitely made me think I should give The Martian a try.
I think you are!
Been reading Neal Stephenson's Seveneves recently and look, I'm all for a good orbital dynamics info-dump But starting a long para in the mere half-dozen pages (of 800) describing our extinction by meteors with the words "Mathematically speaking," is just NO skimmed the last 1/3. WTF was that?
that just sounds incredible. of course I'm state monopolies etc. etc. but I bet the working conditions of that marvellous era were excellent! one of my sisters came to live with me for a year and go to secondary school. they had a full sit-down lunch each day, students and teachers.
absolutely. solo lunches now rein and they are SACRED
and honest to fuck we got more work done than in a morning of meetings, during the final 10 minutes when food was eaten, work-talk was allowed to intrude so as to sort out the two or three main things that needed doing across depts and teams.
omg YES. It took less than three years in France to convert me to a lifetime of fundamental belief that lunch begins at 12.30, ends at 14.00, includes a glass of decent house red, is likely spent with half a dozen colleagues, and should be 80% paid for by employer-subsidised restaurant vouchers.
“We cannot be subject to the will of a third country.” Extremely strong statement from @teresaribera.ec.europa.eu about Europe's sovereignty - and its need to defend itself to deter bullying. Europe can build its own kit, break dependencies, and target enforcement. It's going to take all of it.
yes, "I was just the lobbyist" is not the defence people seem to think..
More on last year's Nigerien coup and what it means for the Sahel.
oh super, thanks Kriszta!
(and thank you!)
I understand v's 2 and 1 had no backwards compatibility (iyswim) though I don't know about v3, but if it didn't then I also see an additional disincentive to adopt a newer protocol. still, though, just using decent passwords for earlier versions seems a basic issue not beyond the wit of man etc.
I agree in the sense that most people - including myself, though at least I know about it in theory - would be SHOCKED to realise how much critical infrastructure (however you define it) depends on random scraps of legacy systems and given that most people who wrote those are retiring, now...
Seconding Jane Jacobs and Elinor Ostrom and suggesting Audrey Lorde, Rosa Luxemburg and Ursula K. Le Guin. (even the less anarcho radical ones seem more radical now in comparison to what we're up against)
Sure, push back against Trump's digital regulation blackmail. But the truth always was, and remains, that there is only one remedy: don't be reliant on the tech. And in order not to be reliant, Europe needs to build its own alternatives. Everything else is noise. www.euractiv.com/section/econ...
(ok I'm going straight down the rabbithole. will let you know if I spot any bears)
Platform choice (or better yet, building new platforms) is a form of exercising and potentially building power; but lending your voice to the powerful who own platforms that profit from hate for the faint hope of reach and persuasion on their platforms is giving your power away to them
bring your wellies....!
They’re gonna turn people over to ICE. Just don’t use their trash at all. It’s bad for your brain and they’re an evil company.
tks! is new to me (though that's not saying anything). looks v interesting and fun. I'll read and digest - probably at length as I'm jammed with writing-related reading. but tks a million for the link.
ha! tks. I'm talking to lots of older ietf guys at the moment and am already imagining asking them about this protocol (tbf it is rather un-ietf to let such a rotten fruit hang on the tree for so long). I anticipate lots of steam hissing, eye rolling, and then a couple of good stories as to why.
I sometimes feel the proposed remedies to Google's abusive monopoly have consequences even worse than continuing as is but I also remember that antitrust remedies against IBM and Microsoft left them intact so imho the whole dang thing should be broken up and sold for scrap
(regular salaried AND self-employed.. we also pay NI, albeit I know we don't have employers to pay it additionally for us)
but hey! I just spotted you were feeling really shitty yesterday (agh, sorry. xx) so don't bother answering if not up to it or it's just too long and complicated...
I genuinely don't see why anyone would still use SNMP , let alone the shittiest, 20+ year old versions? (what am I missing? what does it do that the rest of the suite doesn't? ie what do ppl use now instead? pls dont say quic..)
yes, what Heidi said. 👆
bloody hell, that is really shocking. feels like so much of what we need most right now is finding it hardest to survive. (that said, I know nothing of any of the org's challenges and struggles)
RTFT: "Europe exports data and imports products refined from it, and we build our society on foreign-controlled infrastructure that sets terms for our laws and governance. Sounds familiar? Our friends in the global majority can see it from miles away: .. neocolonialism."
5/Instead, Europe needs to prepare and be ready to lead in a world of weaponized economy. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
This is from earlier this month. It's just a statement of intent - in response to a letter from the main European digital rights org on whether EC will stand up to US pressure on DMA enforcement - but it's ... not nothing. ok it is mostly nothing.. edri.org/wp-content/u...
I love to read that but yes, it is an evergreen piece! never seems to amount to more money or focus. (happy to be proved wrong, if anyone ever runs the actual numbers, though)
tbf tirole is - elsewhere - very very good on market concentration and how awful it is for workers and the economy at large. so this is a rather surprising view, given his research!
all power to that. 🙏
Having lived through Jack Straw's building the state surveillance apparatus I would say his illiberal stance on ECHR perfectly fits his legacy! He's an odd one - was heavily surveilled as a young activist, and when Home Sec thought 'yes, more of that, please, for everyone'. paging dr freud...
feels both rational and healthy (if exhausting!)
It's reading list time! Please send me ARTICLES on European environmental history from 1815 to 1914. Apparently I know only books for this period 🤷♀️
There was a good talk @why2025.bsky.social on this by Zentrum Digitale Souveränität from Germany. Some useful ideas and examples of the shifts already being made. media.ccc.de/v/why2025-21...
Absolutely. This video shared 4 months ago explains that European security requires energy security, information security AND military security. Not just military security.
In terms of EU tech sovereignty, as far as I can tell, BlueSky has raised $36m in funding to get this far. It's not very much. Is it impossible to find a few hundred million to fund European, democracy protecting social networks? You could fund it with a single DSA fine.
Her politics of course, but I've also seen that dynamic play out many times; the older guy taken in by a young woman who's 'not like the others' and only reveals her special vulnerability to him (and his mates, but by the time he realises that, they've all bonded over being The One Who Gets Her).
ah look. same! it's a process.
I know. same! it's probably quite telling that we put up with before grudgingly, slowly, eventually moving from a shitty, dangerous product. the lock-in inertia is strong!
this. Abe's excellent piece in the FT this week explains Europe needs to protect its democracy and security by using its own tech. now a few articles on would be helpful! (It's not a green field. I can point to plenty of great sources.)
libre office. (I'm about to make the move. am so lazy....)
This is really brilliant from @robin.berjon.com - explains why it’s important for Europe to do what China has done and focus much more on having an alternative to US tech. I fear few will read it. Can the sort of children who hang with politicians even read? berjon.com/digital-sove...
Niger's attraction to Russian lies ("We won't just strip your uranium mines, we'll build you a nuclear power plant". Reader, they won't.) comes after decades of French resource extraction. Swapping one coloniser for another, probably worse one seems the story of our times in so many places.
At the last NGI Forum, when asked what I would like to have next to address the threats of tech authoritarianism, I answered that the first thing I wanted was a European Commissioner in charge of Tech Sovereignty. Was this too harsh? 🧵
"People do not want the messy, uncomfortable truth that disabled people know—that we are all only one infection or accident away from disability. That disability is not a choice, but a natural variation of existence." Every single word. Why do editors keep getting taken in? Because they want to.
oh man, yes, it brings it back!
ha! tbf my hat is off to editors - I couldn't do their job. but I would like to live in a world where writers could survive financially by ... writing.
ha!
The SDSR is invariably a timeless (i.e. ages well), clear-eyed analysis that everyone should read.
wtf olivia?! yikes.