Editor of Trans Britain. #Author of Pressing Matters. Lifetime Achievement Award PrideOfManchester 2021. Drove an 8 year old #EV called Peggy and now drives Olga who is one year old.
Posts about #climate mitigation, #trans moral panic, #books. Was #retired. Checked out but unable to leave. She/Her.
I was very sad to learn of the death of my dear friend and fellow activist Mark Rees a couple of weeks ago at the age of 81. Mark, pictured by me here at the wedding of a mutual friend and campaigner in 2004, was a true gentleman in every way and I sheepishly remember fangirling him the first time we met at a conference about 33 years ago. I was always determined that we make every effort to secure his legacy as the first trans person to take Britain to the ECHR over our legal recognition, ..
..a brave step initiated by him about 40 years ago. Mark was one of the first people I interviewed when starting out in podcasting. You can him talk about his life here: https://podcast.plain-sense.co.uk/e/an-interview-with-mark-rees/ Later, when I planned my book Trans Britain, I asked professional journalist Katherine O’Donnell to help include Mark’s contribution to the history of trans activism in Britain by ghost writing his own contribution. You can see the first page of Mark’s important chapter above.
Today I’ve been refreshing my memory on the history of Britain’s MOT test. There had been an MOT test since 1960, brought in by Ernest Marples. It applied to vehicles over ten years old but lacked teeth. I grew up surrounded by death trap vehicles that had no place in the road. But it was Labour’s Barbara Castle who made the MOT test what it is today, in 1967. She also introduced mandatory seat belts and the 70mph speed limit in the Road Traffic Act of 1968. Castle’s MOT test applied to cars..
I worry sometimes that people may use the word ‘fascism’ carelessly without regard to the definition. I think this short video does a good job of defin8ng what the word means and how it fits Donald Trump like a glove.
That time another famous national coffee chain sold me a tea and a Mermaids-branded biscuit without having people boycott them. The book I was reading is also pretty unforgiving towards the fake feminism of GCs.
Apparently BT will be phasing out landline telephone connections over the next two years. The wire will still be used for broadband (unless you switch to fibre) but phones will henceforth plug into a formerly covered-up socket on your router and be fully digital from there. This means 999 won’t work in a power cut as we are all presumed to have mobiles. Not sure how my second and third phones will be served on the in-house wiring.
A bit late for #Caturday but this is Pablo, who owns one of the neighbours. Pablo and I don’t usually get on because he usually attacks my ankles when he sees me. After retaliating with a broom yesterday he came to discuss terms.
Over the last 3-4 years some of our most famous ‘newspapers’ have stopped reporting their audited circulation figures. One must assume they found the rapidly falling numbers too embarrassing. Now the Press Gazette and the Audit Bureau of Circulation have confirmed our guesses by estimating the current sales of those titles, based on their last audited numbers and the industry’s typical decline.
Ponder for a moment those people who invent hashtags on social media calling for this or that business to be boycotted. Sure, they get a little dopamine hit from being boosted by their tiny group of mutual boosters and being briefly a trending topic. But then, surely, they must go past branches of the businesses they’ve tried to ‘cancel’ or regard the hated merchandise on a shelf and a few brain cells must register that ordinary folk are buying just as normal. That evidence of failure must hurt.
Most of those accounts seemed to be just obedient footsoldiers, boosting the posts of the famous instigators or infesting the replies of each day’s nominated pile on victim. They may each have got the impression they were part of something big in the zeitgeist. Their activity certainly fools the algorithms and counts as ‘trending’ to this day. But seven thousand people impressing each other is still just 7,000. Everyone else learns to ignore them. Think of that next time you pass a busy Costa.
Back in the days when I used the famous and unhinged microblogging site I used to say that, by carefully blocking all evidence of anti-LGBT or climate denying trolls and their followers/boosters I kept all sight and sound of them at bay. All I had to do was top up my blocklist as a maintenance activity when newly minted accounts surfaced in the replies to other folk. That way I had blocked 7,000 monomaniacal accounts and that seemed to be the extent of them — in my sphere at least. …
PS. In the nine months since moving to Mastodon I’ve only even seen the reason to block six accounts and nine dodgy instances — and those were all just random run of the mill jerks rather than part of any organised hate campaign.
As of the end of July there are now over 800,000 pure battery EVs on Britain’s roads. We are reaching the stage where you see them all the time (especially now with green striped number plates) whenever you go out. However, after eight years of driving an EV, I’m STILL the only person on a forty house estate with one.
If I use the terms 'top', 'bottom', 'twink' or anything like that, there's always some guy who jumps in with a snide 'gotcha', because I've clearly just outed myself as a homosexual
Mate, I know the word 'Quarterback' as well, but last I checked I haven't been drafted by the NFL
Also, this isn't a school playground in the 1980s. It's 2023, and you actively have to work hard to remain ignorant about terminology from other communities. Your approach sounds exhausting.
Since getting my new EV in April I’ve been carefully charting the energy used against mileage and that which was put in via either public or home charging. So far, in almost 1700 miles, I’ve used a net 391kWh of energy to move the car along. “Net” because we measure energy after deducting what’s put back into the battery through regenerative braking. The thing that puzzled me, however,was that the charge I’d put in was 471kWh. Of course 45kWh of that 80kWh is what’s still in the battery..
..(77% charged). Where was the other 35kWh? Then it dawned on me… That difference (35kWh of the 471kWh put in) is the energy lost to the inefficiency of battery charging etc… Not every kWh you put in goes to the wheels or powering the accessories. It means the car has an efficiency of 92.5% between the energy put in and the work you get out. The 7.5% is mostly lost in heating the battery and the charging cable as the car charges. Shock! Horror! 😱..
@finestructure It’s part of the energy measured as coming out of the battery. Most of the lights and accessories don’t use enough power to even think about them. Most EVs have LED headlights and the heating is often by heat pump, which takes well under 1kW. Even if the climate control is going flat out on cooling it is taking no more than about 1-1.5kW. In an EV with a 60kWh battery you could run the appliances for days. Personally I prefer the heated seats and steering wheel.
“The Big one” — The Jan 6th case indictment against Trump apparently arrived whilst we Brits were asleep. However, because there are already so many indictments against the man and his enablers and cronies, it has less of a bombshell effect than such a thing would have had just two and a half years ago. And still the republicans look set to choose Trump as their 2024 presidential candidate. (Not that Britain is in any position to offer moral judgement of course.)
