For years, liberals have warned about the danger of politicians corrupting the independence of the civil service. The inexorable rise of David Frost is a lesson to us. It shows there are civil servants who so want to be politicised that they yearn to become politicians, as long as they do not have to stand for election in the process.
I was invited for a covid vaccine because the NHS thought I was 6cm tall
Congratulations to Liam Thorp of the Liverpool Echo for today’s headline of the day.
Unfriended
So here’s a bit of news from Australia, where legislation has been published to make Google and Facebook pay news publishers. The main response to this has been from Facebook who decided to show their displeasure and, presumably convince everyone that they are too important for legislators, by blocking links to news websites in the country.
This didn’t go quite to plan:
But when Facebook implemented its ban, an online bookstore, charities, and even a domestic violence support service saw their Facebook presences erased. Australia’s national Basketball and Rugby bodies also saw their pages sent to the sin bin.
According to Facebook, this is because the law doesn’t spell out clearly enough, for them, what is news and what isn’t.
This leaves Facebook in the interesting position of telling advertisers it offers superior micro-targeting services, while telling the world it is unable to tell the difference between a newspaper and a bookshop.
When I saw this story, I was close to posting the above quote and leaving it at that. But then I read on and, while the reporter notes that:
Having woken up to a news-free Facebook, your Australia-based correspondent can report that that sky has not fallen in and it remains possible to be well-informed and entertained down under.
Which is as it should be. Facebook, ultimately, is just a website and one that I have been quite happy to ignore since I deleted my account in 2012.
But then there’s this:
I’ve seen other complaining that they liked Facebook as a news aggregator and miss that aspect of its service but will instead visit actual media websites even if that’s a bit fiddly.
Apologies in advance to anyone reading this who gets their news from Facebook, but this is madness.
Facebook uses an algorithm to determine what to show you. Obviously, I have no insight into how this algorithm works — which is a problem in itself — but we do know that it tends to simply deliver more of the same, dragging users of the Zuckerweb into ever more polarised echo chambers.
There is a better alternative. It’s called RSS.
This is a technology that saw it’s heyday in the first decade of the 21st century and allows you to aggregate all of the content, across the web, that you want to see. You would visit a website, add their RSS feed to your preferred reader and, from then on, all of their content is delivered straight to you. It really is that simple.
RSS has fallen out of favour somewhat with the rise of social media and its algorithmic timelines took hold, even though the technology itself still underpins much of the modern web. I still use it, however, and I honestly don’t know how I would manage without it. I can see what I want, when I want, and organised how I want.
So, rather than having to constantly keep up with the latest online drama, I can take twenty minutes, two or three times a day, to check up on issues and subjects that interest and concern me. And then I can go back to focussing on whatever else I’m supposed to be doing.
Although RSS has fallen out of favour, it hasn’t gone away. Many news sites, most blogs and many other sites continue to deliver RSS feeds. The Guardian, for example, offers a feed not only for the site as a whole, but also a separate feed for every individual writer and subject. And, of course, there are still plenty of aggregators out there.
I have been happily using NewsBlur since Google Reader was killed off, but many other options are available.
Take on Me
Lake Street Dive was formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 2004 and, according to Last.fm, is named after a street in Minneapolis. The band expanded into a quintet in 2017 and all members share writing and arrangement duties.
Their personalities, skills, and wide-ranging taste in pop, rock, R&B, and jazz have long blended together to make an impressively cohesive sound, both sophisticated and playful, combining retro influences with contemporary attitude.
Their tribute to A-Ha’s Take on Me really is rather good. Especially when the trumpet gets started.
Unflooded
At the start of this month, I mentioned that the daily walk I usually take was a bit flooded. Things got worse after that and, shortly after I had decided I should look for a different route, the footpath was closed. So, for the past couple of weeks I have been taking my walks around the town. It’s not the same.
Now that the snow has melted and the sun is out (it almost feels like Spring), I thought I would take another look.
The river water is still a bit high, but not too high, and the bridge is accessible again.
It’s also been warm enough for me to spend some time chopping wood for the next cold snap.
Things are looking up.
12/2/21
Happy Palindrome Day.
Winter is here
We actually have a decent layer of snow at last. It started snowing on Saturday evening and continued pretty much all the way through Sunday. It’s eased off now, but we are still seeing the occasional flurries.
It’s days like this that I light the fire and appreciate the fact that I am still working from home.
Quote of the Day: Will the Brexit government take responsibility?
The full effects of Brexit, now that the transition period has ended and the TCA has kicked in, are still only beginning to be felt. Every single one of them discredits the claims made by Brexiters, including the idea that there was no need to extend the transition so as to allow a genuine implementation period. There’s no point in them continuing to deny these effects, or continuing to try to justify the false claims they made. Now, it is their responsibility to work to mitigate, so far as it is possible, the worst of the damage they have created.
— Chris Grey looks at some of the many ways in which Brexit is coming apart at the seams .
Tell Me Where You’re Going
Those of us who were around in the 1990s may well remember Sleeper, yet another Britpop band probably best known for Sale of the Century. The band broke up in 1998 but singer-songwriter, Louise Wener continued to work on material along with Andy Maclure and Jon Stewart and, by 2000, had got as far as recording some tracks.
The band reformed in 2017 and released The Modern Age in 2019. Obviously, the hoped-for tours in 2020 didn’t happen but the band didn’t remain idle. They went back to those twenty-year-old recordings and came up with the “lost” album, This Time Tomorrow.
The opening track of this album is Tell Me Where You’re Going and it does feel very much like classic Sleeper.
I’ve always liked Louise Wener’s vocals. I still do.
The album is released by the band’s own label, Gorsky Records and is available from their online store.
And finally, I need to thank We Are Cult for pointing me in this direction.
Why nuclear power plants are necessary
Petra on The green energy dilemma points out:
We need a constant supply of electricity for the world to function as it does and if we don’t want to burn fossil fuels or biomass which produce emissions, we need nuclear power.
She makes a lot of good points. The full post is a detailed analysis of the state of green energy today and is well worth reading.
I often see environmental campaigners assuming that the world is as they would like it to be, rather than dealing with the world as it is. So it’s always good to see a bit of reality inserted into this discussion.
Most people would agree that renewable energy is the idea, but we are not even close to it being able to supply all of our energy needs. So we do need to look at the alternatives and, of those, nuclear energy is the cleanest and safest alternative available.
Pretending otherwise costs lives.
