Writer, editor. Communication fancier. Better world navigator. Future peerer.
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China’s EV surge is on another level. ⚡ By 2024, nearly 40% of its 25M+ car sales were electric—numbers that make Norway’s early lead look like a footnote. 2025 on track for 60%. What was once a Nordic experiment is now a Chinese-scale transformation reshaping the global auto industry. 🌍 #EV #BEV
this exists it is called thinking
Universal Basic Income doesn’t replace work. It replaces fear. Fear of the next bill, the next emergency, the next eviction. When survival isn’t the only job, people can build, create, and care in ways that actually move society forward. #UBI
IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.
🔴GB News Ramps Up Migrant ‘Invasion’ Rhetoric as Channel Veers Far Right Analysis reveals surging use of rhetoric about refugees being of “fighting age”, “scavengers”, “dirty foreigners” and part of an “invasion”, as campaigners warn of channel’s radicalising effect bylinetimes.com/2025/09/18/g...
Psychologically healthy people rarely show racism. They don’t need to boost their identity by demeaning others. Dr Steve Taylor writes. From #TheConversation -- thanks!
Friction within Your Party is disappointing. Hoping someone can step up, pull it together, and kick out anyone promoting discrimination. We need a social-democratic party with principles that appeal to Labour supporters in a current, non-dinosaur package. Preferably operational for May elections.
Respectfully disagree: 1) in fact it is unusual for a democracy w/ this level of GDP to turn authoritarian & so quickly; 2) the weakness of both institutions (congress & courts) and individuals (Schumer etc) is shocking. Would take less than 10 people in congress or 2 SC justices to stop all this.
NYT: gone. WaPo: gone. LA Times: gone. CBS: gone. CNN: gone. MSNBC: going. Plus almost all local newspapers & local TV news stations. Plus almost all of social media. The information environment is utterly dominated by the right & everything else is downstream of that.
Pay attention to the media organisations who will report on Trump declaring antifa - which does not exist - as a terrorist organisation without explicitly saying what antifa stands for every time. They’d have to report that Trump is effectively declaring anti-fascism as an enemy ideology.
Walz showed us the way. Just keep hammering on what the extremist positions actually are. Neighbors taking care of each other is normal. Being hateful is not. The enemy is pluralistic ignorance. The majority of people may privately disagree with loudest/best financed voices but won't speak up.
Too perfect.
Just to clarify - the main thing the Trump administration is making cheaper is....cocaine?
UK govt infatuation with nuclear power continues. Plans for Small Modular Reactors in places around UK No SMR has ever been built in the West. Those that have been tried have faced the familiar issues of escalating costs and delays A 🧵about this nuclear agreement www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Part of me thinks "this cheapens political discourse". Another - slightly bigger - part of me thinks "HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA GO ED!" ~AA
exhibit 183193 in "nobody running big corporations has a single fucking clue about selling things" betty crocker shrank their cake boxes instead of raising prices and now a huge % of recipes that use them no longer work. meaning there's no point in buying a mix at all.
Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity 2004: A year 2010: ~ a month 2015: ~ a week Now: A day ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪
UPEND THE ESTABLISHMENT, by voting for a party composed entirely of rejects from the oldest party in the country that was in power for 14 years. 😂 Reform UK increasingly look like the Tories just ran off stage, then ran back on wearing a comedy glasses-nose-moustache disguise.
Last year I published a little book, 'Why Don't We Make the World Better?', about how worldviews and other things in our heads fend off positive social change. This post has some of the intro, about living in interesting times and travelling between stories. theupwardpath.com/pillars-of-a...
Starmer's project has been to turn Labour into the replacement Conservatives. It's been pretty successful. And now it leaves the party looking like what people resoundingly voted out... The root strategy is, in a time of unsettling change, insist that the past still holds. Reality says otherwise.
This is such positive, powerful, direct communication. The fact that this seems so remarkable and so rare speaks volumes about our failure to stand up to the fossil fuel lobby.
⭐ Great to see that the TUC Congress has passed a Europe motion highlighting the importance of easing mobility for touring artists. 🇪🇺 The motion highlight the significance of UK trade with the EU, and the potential for this to boost UK economic growth. https://bit.ly/4mdSONY
Macron now has three options: a. Nominate yet another PM to be either hamstrung or shot down; b. Call a parliamentary election, where the arithmetic may get worse; or c. Call a presidential election and walk away (since he cannot stand a third time). (or d. b+c) ~AA www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5...
This *exactly*. Hundreds of millions of regular people are using tools that they have been told, by their bosses and the richest and most powerful people in the world, are the inevitable future, and that they _must_ learn to be employable. They need something *more* promising as an alternative.
Many media types and Dems continue to operate as if Trump is a politically invincible figure, a "Teflon Don." But in truth he's becoming an increasingly weak, failing, diminished, unpopular, naked-emperor figure, and it's time to treat him as such. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2000...
Good morning with good news: "IRENA found that in 2024, the global average cost of electricity generated by solar PV was, on average, 41% lower than the least-cost new fossil fuel-fired power plant, as shown in the figure below." Solar booms! #energysky interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/so...
That's good, but don't fall into the meme of the virtue of toil. People are deserving because they are people.
The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.
And now, as the UK Conservative party flirts with the far-right, Kemi Badenoch’s ‘Free Speech’ party has also opted to ban us from their conference. That’s despite years of attendance through the Johnson, Truss, and Sunak years. bylinetimes.com/2025/09/04/k...
The biggest scandal in US public life *ought* to be that we are the richest country in history & yet our infrastructure sucks, our transportation choices suck, our cities suck, our healthcare sucks, our public administration sucks, & in dozens of little ways, our daily lives suck.
I think 'Starmer will make Farage PM' is perhaps more pressing.
“The government has flunked the simplest test for a Labour administration: how to respond to an insurgent hard right…the opportunities for progressive politicians to seize this moment are simply waiting to be taken”. Spot on - and exactly what the Greens & @zackpolanski.bsky.social will do 👇
7. Hope lies in the recognition that the left can also change the system. That the left too can mount a radical challenge to business as usual. It lies in twigging that elections here haven’t been won from the centre in years, and that this, if we can grasp the potential, can be used to good effect.
6. “Elections are won from the centre” is a mantra used to try to block challenges from the left. It says “you can’t win if you want to change the system”. It ignores the fact that first the neoliberals and now the far right have completely transformed – in some respects replaced - the system.
I see people bleating yet again that "elections are won from the centre". Let's examine this claim. 1. Not long ago, the current Labour government, with its grovelling to corporations and oligarchs, extreme deregulation, island of strangers rhetoric etc, would have been classed as radical right. 🧵
The current version of Labour seems hellbent on being part of the United Right, so that particular question can be shelved till something changes.
Question to Zach Polanski at the leadership announcement: "Q: How can you take on Nigel Farage when your policy on immigration is so different?" Everything wrong with British politics and media summed up so succinctly in a single absolutely unhinged question.
I think you're right. Previous leadership styles have been important for building structure and getting seen as a serious choice. But now a right-wing consensus of nostalgism and division has power and threatens to entrench further. People need to hear another story that's worth voting for.
Congratulations to the newly elected Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England & Wales, @rachelmillward.bsky.social
Congratulations to the newly elected Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England & Wales, @mothinali.bsky.social
Oof. Surprising - prob some clear lessons in there for what members want to see.
Congratulations to the newly elected Leader of the Green Party of England & Wales, @zackpolanski.bsky.social
Looks like Sky's own account is @news.sky.com and the one you linked was a fan-created feed account.
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
Would be interesting to know how many don't know and not voting responses were in there. I suspect there are many.
Free-Speech Champions and Cancel-Culture Scourge latest: "The Reform UK leader of Nottinghamshire, Mick Barton has banned the Nottingham Post and Nottinghamshire Live, from speaking to him or any of his councillors 'with immediate effect'." ~AA www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
... I'd like to find something with a bit of security. Ideal version: part-time; skill types like comms, messaging, project assistant; areas like climate or UBI.
Anyone know good places to look for social change jobs in the UK?
This post from a formerly serious newspaper is getting the replies it deserves.
This is what we mean when we say America will not progress until the *systems* of white supremacy are dismantled and discarded. The same fascist policies that targeted Japanese Americans are now targeting Latino Americans, in literally the same locations and with the same denial of due process.
Boosters think that they're going to tell me "I use this all the time!" and it'll change my mind. I cannot express enough how irrelevant it is that you have a use case. AI is being sold as the future of everything, and it hasn't proven it's the future of anything. www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...
Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.
Also, while we're on the subject: widespread distrust in science happened BECAUSE science told Americans things they didn't want to hear, like "racism and sexism are bad" and "climate change exists" and "widespread beef subsidies are bad" and "universal basic income would be good probably."
Also, 'AI-enabled growth' isn't a thing.
Interesting vid about a sustainable city project in Bhutan. youtu.be/hPlRmUv7qzo?...
"Erupt across UK" is a crazily inaccurate ITV news headline for a patchy smattering of protests eg 150-250 people in Orpington, Horley & Cheshunt; a peak yesterday 300 in Mold; & outnumbered by counterprotests in Liverpool, Bristol and Perth ITV should report accurately, not invent "erupts"
Good read
🍂Leaves falling off the trees in August? We all know this isn't right. Signs there's something seriously wrong with our climate are all around us - but politicians continue to ignore them. It couldn't be clearer we need action on climate change now. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
The people dominating our political landscape, culture, and economy are just so stupid and full of shit it's almost impossible to describe
... Some chunk of the numbers polling for Reform are people looking for someone to help them make sense of a changing world. Another prominent voice offering a different version of that - one closer, after all, to majority attitudes - could be powerful in drawing them away. We need that, and soon.
UK politics: assuming Your Party gets its foundations right, it'll start with Corbyn and Sultana as MPs - and prob more from the currently 21 Inds. More MPs than Reform. Some number of Lab MPs will hop across, in a block or a trickle. And a ready council base if prev Lab-leavers like what they see.
🤔 Someone is desperate for hatred and division. Guess who?
Got halfway through before the overbearing music became too much.
I was explaining a treatment plan to a patient, and their partner told me to talk slowly because they were typing what I was saying into chatgpt to "verify" there wasn't a better alternative. In case you are wondering the stage of mess we are in with LLMs. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
Responses to this are going well.
100%. Many politicians obsess with “growth”, but growth of what? “The economy” they might retort - but what part of the economy? GDP is an appalling measure. It rewards many destructive dynamics alongside good dynamics- and with politicians hellbent on increasing it by any means - we’re screwed.
Every day this Summer has been a record of how Nigel Farage already runs the country. An endless cycle of hate & racism. One day boat arrivals, the next releasing ethnicity data for crimes, so we can know whether to riot if they’re brown or shrug if they’re white. Back to the 70s🤦♀️ #r4today
Elon Musk’s Tesla applies to supply electricity to GB households. Electricity from Trump supporter who wants to fund far right political parties in the UK. Hope OFGEM denies licence and people boycott. Fat better to bring energy into public ownership.
"We committed the largest copyright violation crime ever and now we're being faced with the largest copyright class action ever?!? WHAT THE HELL?!?"
NEW in Bolts: Seattle voters decided this week to renew their "democracy vouchers," which is a unique program that hands residents $100 in vouchers to donate to local candidates of their choice. The program will continue for another 10 years. Bolts explains! boltsmag.org/seattle-demo...
The Trump administration has announced that the US will rewrite past climate reports, in a clear attempt to erase scientific history and undermine the consensus on human-caused climate change.
A truly terrifying read 🗞️ ⬇️ "In effect, the E.P.A. will eliminate its own authority to combat climate change." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/c...
Independent MP Rupert Lowe has admitted mistaking a charity rowing crew for “illegal migrants”
Source: archive.ph/taXyE Service providers will be told to ask for birth certificates and interrogate service users to discover their "biological sex". The guidance also ban trans men from female toilets on the basis that their presence would cause "alarm or distress".
This is an attempt to remove trans people from public life and no other spin on it should be accepted.
🔴‘House of the People’ Citizens’ Assembly Provides Alternative to UK’s Far-Right Descent’ The first sitting of the assembly recommended a ‘People’s Charter’, backed a wealth tax and an arms embargo on Israel bylinetimes.com/2025/07/25/h...
On the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima, it's worth reflecting on the past and on where we are now. The UN, EU, & ECHR were set up after WW2 to bring lasting peace, & to protect people. It's on all of us to remember that - and challenge those seeking to tear them down
If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages
A devastating blow to one of Earth’s most iconic ecosystems🌏 The Great Barrier Reef has suffered its worst coral decline on record, with mass bleaching driven by extreme ocean heat. Scientists warn the reef is nearing a tipping point. Read the full story in BBC👇 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Just absolute garbage from the NYT. It takes a really special kind of person to ignore a mountain of evidence and look at one RCT exploring a specific causal finding, and then say that because we didn't see certain brainwave activity at age 4 that $333/mo for every kid would not help the poor.
"how many people don’t actually want to do the work of being human" You know, I hear an echo in there of the number of times this last decade we've all said "I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people."
Turns out forcing old, uneconomic coal plants to remain online when the operator wanted to retire them is expensive. Keeping Campbell running in MI has cost $29 million over 5 weeks: www.detroitnews.com/story/busine...
Good grief. Coal is, according to the Trump administration, the happening thing. Up next: US government bets big on traction engines.
An energy revolution is underway in this century, though it’s unfolded in ways slow enough and technical enough for most people not to notice (and I assume it’s nowhere near finished). It is astonishing – a powerful solution to the climate crisis... [Wrote it a while ago; came out yesterday.]
“California, the fourth largest economy on planet Earth, is this summer using 40 percent less natural gas than it did two years ago to generate electricity. If you wanna know why the fossil fuel industry is freaking out and sponsoring every bad politician on Earth, that's why.”
Have had multiple conversations today along the lines of: A) six years of many of the things (but not all) that we were warning would happen have happened in six days, so far, and B) six years of narratives and PR spin from five governments and Ofcom are not meshing well with legislated reality.
It says a lot about where we're going that the BBC is now running stories in which they ask lifeboat crews whether they will apologise for using their boats to save lives
A few years ago, I aggregated all my writing on the Online Safety Act into one post, based on fighting it at various jobs from 2019-2022. You’ll find the post here. I wrote it whilst living off of £430 a month in employment benefit after two layoffs in 12 months. heatherburns.tech/2023/04/17/g...
We need to teach people the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. Because the discomfort of the safest people is endangering the most vulnerable, all day every day.
❌ Bert Bingham, cabinet member for transport and environment at Nottinghamshire County Council, called global warming a "hoax" during a public meeting. 🙄 He claimed data is "manipulated" and people have been "brainwashed over time through the media".
EFF and @article19.bsky.social support @wikimediafoundation.org’s challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act. Wikipedia is the world’s most trusted and widely used encyclopedia, and the OSA must not be allowed to diminish it and jeopardize the volunteers on which it depends.
The UK might end up blocking #Wikipedia due to the Online Safety Act, since they stated that they will not implement any verification rules, citing potential exploitation by bad actors
In “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” the author describes “inevitablism” as a tactic companies use to stop conversation about the amount of our private lives they are commodifying and selling.
So we’re passing laws to protect children from things they see online but simultaneously pushing to expose their gooey young brains to AI from kindergarten on, a tech that’s been shown to impair critical thinking and cause psychotic breaks in full grown adults, even ones who work with it. Cool.
Basic income doesn't solve every problem but it makes every problem easier to solve
Today on Volts: last year, the residents of Ann Arbor, MI, voted to create a "sustainable energy utility" that operates alongside the investor-owned utility & supplements it with clean energy. This is, AFAIK, the first arrangement of this kind in the world. I talk with its architect & champion.
🚨BREAKING🚨 ICJ ruling that a healthy environment is a human right could be a real turning point in setting out governments’ legal responsibility to tackle #climate crisis 👇
NEW World court issues landmark ruling in biggest ever climate court case ICJ judges in the Hague say failing to protect the planet from climate change may breach international law, a decision that could open up routes for reparations and new types of lawsuits news.sky.com/story/a-new-...