Status:

Before the heatwave I ordered a cheap solar powered extractor fan. Today, as the heatwave enters its final stages, the fan arrived. (No problem with the delay - it’s hot out there!) But there’ll be another one along in a few weeks I’m sure, so it’s not wasted.

As is often the case I misread the measurements and thought I was getting as 12" fan but of course it’s 12cm, which is fine but quite limited in the amount of air it pushes through. It’s not going to work as a people-cooling fan in the dome, but it should fit nicely in the shed where it can pull out the warm air and make it nicer for the rabbits. Looking forward to fitting that once the heatwave fully passes.

While it only generates 12v it’s also the first modern solar panel I’ve gotten to play around with, which is quite exciting in anticipation of the plug-in revolution to come. I’ll doubtless be trying to wire it to all manner of low-voltage gizmos over the summer. Interesting how it seems to need sunshine on the entire surface in order to work. A couple of fingers of shade and it shuts down completely rather than just lowering the output. I now need to know why that is.

Today’s links start with three Stirchley-specific things, so feel free to skip if you’re not local to me. I’ve often been torn between the local and the global in my blogging. Both are important to me and I’ve never really figured out how to merge them. I remember the term “glocal” being banded around and frankly that can fuck off.

One of my back-burner ideas is for a Created in Birmingham-style^* blog for grassroots progressive, activist and cooperative activities in the city, building on the networks I’ve developed around composting and coops. I reckon there’s an audience and a need, and maybe even a bit of funding. Something to consider if/when my CFS subsides.

^* A CiB-style blog, in my parlance, points at all the things going on in short posts, giving a daily or weekly snapshot of a scene or community. These days it would have to deal with the walled garden of Instagram, but that’s for another day.

Locally Campaigning:

• Help us save the Warehouse — A very good and necessary plan to widen a railway viaduct in Digbeth is threatening the Birmingham Friends of the Earth building on Alison St which has been flagged to be demolished so land can be temporarily used for a construction worksite. In most other locations in Digbeth this wouldn’t be a huge problem as it’s mostly home to temporary and transient businesses and projects awaiting the inevitable redevelopment apocalypse. But FotE (who are otherwise in favour of the transport plans) have spent the last five decades developing that location into the hub of progressive, ecological action for the city. If you’ve ever used the building or the attached garden (Roo and I built our first compost bay structure there which led to refining the design and repeating it across the city) please contribute to the consultation and hopefully they’ll change their plans and spare it.

• A local church has plans to take over an old council office building on our high street, next to the primary school, and turn part of it into a community centre. This would be fine, except they’re one of those evangelical churches that doesn’t like gay people and thinks women are secondary to men. Which is fine, you can believe whatever you like, but I’m not comfortable with a community space that presents as a neutral good being run by extremists like this. They’re running a consultation really pushing the community bit, which has got my goat. (I have no problem at all with churches, mosques, temples, whatever and think they can provide valuable spaces and services in communities, especially at the moment. Faith is great, bigotry is unacceptable.)

• McDonalds are looking to build a drive-through in Stirchley. I’m actually not too exercised about this. Are McDonalds an evil megacorp with toxic business practices? Sure. Is a drive-through a terrible idea on an already congested road? Of course. Would I prefer they didn’t build here? Definitely! Have I used them when in a strange town with social anxiety and knowing exactly what I’ll get with the minimum of interaction is just what I need? Yes. But I know people who are very angry about this so here’s some advice. Don’t fill in the “consultation” that’s going around, especially if you object. It will have no impact on the council’s decision to give planning permission and will just allow them to tailor their application around your objections. Wait until that’s submitted to the council and then leave comments that actual decision makers will read.

  • Here’s a much more positive plan for the land, devised by local people, that just needs capitalism to go away.

Reading:

• Un-Doing Philosophy — Apparently AI chatbots are popular amongst academic philosophers. Not custom machine learning models that interrogate specific data sets, but your boilerplate ChatGPT scholastic parrot junk. Which is kinda worrying, no? Lily Hu thinks so and outlines why in this very entertaining and accessible essay which has applications in all disciplines, I think. [via]
  • “The dominant philosophical style today is stylelessness: a mode of writing that attempts at effacing the fact that a work has a creator at all. But while the fantasy that underlies stylelessness might have appeared fifty years ago as a mostly harmless expression of the philosophical aspiration to objectivity, it appears rather more ominous today. A technology which seems to speak from everywhere and nowhere on any issue, instantly, is now here.”
  • I tend to think, if you’re doing some tedious busywork from which you will learn nothing then yeah, automate that shit. But if the work is training, something which will make you better and stronger and wiser, then why the fuck would you offboard it to a machine? It’s like a marathon runner using a motorbike in their training. Use it or lose it people.
• The 13 biggest myths about heatwaves – and how to bust them — Useful back-pocket facts.
• Stewart Lee: Move over, Nigel – it’s time for the Bin Supremacy — The only people worth listening to about Binface are comedians and satirists. No-one else is qualified.

Watching:

• What is LaTeX? ‌(20:43) — Something I’ve often wondered as I’ve seen it mentioned about the place over the last few decades but never had the need to investigate further. I still don’t, but I love the fundamental idea behind it, allowing scientists to write formulae etc without having to worry about how it looks on the screen so they can focus on the actual work. “Formatting is not writing” is one of the most profound things I’ve heard in a long time and is why I love writing in Markdown. I don’t have to think about how it looks. That comes later.
  • via Unsung who zeroes in on how giving the user very limited control is way better than the semblance of full control. This is why WYSIWYG web editors are a nightmare. THEY LIE!
• Torbjörn Åhman makes a burnisher ‌(19:55)

Listening:

• What On Earth? With Count Binface ‌(28m) — A 2021 half hour of semi-serious nonsense from Radio 4 which ends with advice from Martin Bell who sort of predicts the current moment.

LOLing:

• Fiona is watching the US traitors at the moment. I can’t deal with that sort of programme so she’s got headphone on, but every so often I look up and see Alan Cumming dressed in the most ridiculous outfit and kinda wish I could join in.