Gaza and Glasto and a stopped watch - June 2025
A stopped watch doesn’t count steps even once a day,I’m doing government bureaucracy, Doctor Who and 3d models while the government puts peaceful groups on terrorist ban lists.
Me
The end of Time
My pineTime has stopped charging 😦 Seems like there’s voltage across the charger pins, but the watch shows no sign of being attached to it when it’s attached.
Damn. That’s annoying.
Seems like it happens to some people now and then but nobody on Reddit has proposed a solution.
So farewell then Pinetime Watch 🪦.
Now nobody at all is running my custom software I think, and I have no way to fix the bugs.
Could replace it, but I’m not really paying any attention to the things it measures anyway. Heart-rate is too unreliable to be useful and steps seems likely to be counting my leg-jiggles since I tend to hit 10,000 most days without trying or leaving the flat.
The software which tracks my time and mood isprobably better running on the phone really. Easier to add notes and detail. Can’t really input text from a watch. Location data can be added in ways the watch couldn’t.
So back to not wearing a watch at all I think. Who needs it now we all carry pocket watches with internet and telephony.
Then! Surprise!
After two days and two nights powered down in the cradle, on the third day it is risen!
Strange.
But that didn’t last. It stopped charging againa couple more days later and this time stayed dead.
Government Bureaucracy
One Login To Rule Them All
I believe I have managed to prove my ID in order to comply with the new laws that say I have to prove my ID to own the business I own that I’m sure already asked me to prove my ID when I registered it.
First I tried the on-web version, but that apparently relies upon the corporates having managed to profile and track me, because it told me they had no questions upon which to base identification.
Good I guess?
My avoid-tracking systems must be working at least a bit?
Next I tried the android app, but apparently the phone I tried that with is too old and the app won’t install.
So next option is turning up at a post office with a printed letter. I don’t own a printer though, so had to have them post that to me.
Took the letter and a driving licence up to the post office later and “It’s not going through” they said, pointing to a stalled progress bar on an android app on a tablet.
Um. Okay. So?
Just wait longer apparently. About ten minutes and it finally proceeded and the post office man took aphotograph of me after asking me to disrobe of my robe, strip down to a teeshirt and jeans.
Not sure in what sense this has proven my ID any more than it was already proven to get the driving licence or company registration in the first place?
Apparently I now have government logins for “One Login” and for “government gateway” and they are not the same thing? But sort of are the same thing?
Can’t say I really understand it. Expect they’ll introduce a third government login when they do these Digital ID cards they’re talking about.
God knows how I’m supposed to know which to use when the company tax records need updating in a few months.
Tunnel
Drove through the Blackwall Tunnel to Greenwich and back to Islington.
South of the river it’s all 30MPH speed limits and everything feels too fast and scary compared to the sedate and pedestrian-friendly 20MPH limits in the north.
Since I last went through it, it seems the Blackwall tunnel has added a toll.
The TFL website for setting up to pay the tolls is absolutely awful.
Failed in Librewolf, Failed in Firefox. Failed because VPN.
Took me four attempts in three different browsers to get it to take payment card details.
Demands no special characters in the password?!?
And doesn’t even tell you what the specific problem with the password is, just “doesn’t meet the rules above”
Uses awful validation questions like “mothers maiden name”. Bad enough practice to use them at all, but the “memorable date” question restricts to ddmmyy format so you can’t even put in a date from outside this century.
For some reason asks for a PIN and and Password both!?
Pointless.
Then actually refuses the login form if you supply both!?
Setting up the auto-payment doesn’t seem to have covered the charges added to the registration plate yesterday, so I had to do the payment-details entering yet again to deal with yesterday’s charges.
The validation message contains the link only in the HTML of the email, not the text version, so viewed in Mutt it has no link.
And this all seems to be separate from the Dartford Crossing charge, which had a less crappy but still pretty crappy signup.
Good god council programmers suck at web-dev.
Doctor Who
There’s a woman I know who, when she was pregnant, was very keen to hear the opinions of crystal diviners and homeopath medics on what sex her new baby would be but wouldn’t let the ultrasound-scan technician that actually knows tells her because Spoilers.
On that note, I’m happy to watch Ellie’s summary of fan theories about Doctor Who just so long as I’m sure she doesn’t actually have any idea what she’s talking about. 😆
The main theories are:
- Billie is not the doctor
I want Billie to be the Doctor. I want to see her David Tennant impression. I don’t want any nonsense about her being outside the line like the War Doctor. I want her to be the sixteenth Doctor and whoever is next to be Seventeenth.
Doing otherwise is sexism.
- She is the tardis.
No, bad enough that the Tardis was embodied once already. No talking tardis.
- She is Rose, pulled from the alternate universe she was trapped in.
I miss Rose like crazy, and want Rose back as much as anyone but she’d have to be Rose in her Forties not Rose in her Twenties and it’s sad enough watchingall my friends age and die without Rose doing it too.
So hope not.
- She is The Bad Wolf.
Sure, in some sense inevitable. The Bad Wolf is more important to time than Rose Tyler. This new entity that regenerated into the tardis is not a girl who got a geography a-level, she’s a timelord who sees all of time and space. Not a mere human, even a really great mere human.
- She is the doctor.
Ellie says “She is the doctor but there needs to be a deeper exploration of that” You mean, like in a show that’s been asking one question for 65 years: “Doctor who?”
If there isn’t an exploration of who exactly is this strange “Doctor” it isn’t even doing the show title justice.
- Revisit old face
Nah. It’s not just the Doctor in Rose’s face, it is surely part Bad Wolf.
Ellie wasn’t overjoyed to see Rose’s face, but I was.
It’s Rose! Back, in some sense. I love Rose.
Ellie wants just one movie or a couple of specials.
Here’s what I want:
The Doctor has regenerated into the Bad Wolf because there’s an urgent need for five times one hour long specials to cover a year or two without Disney Funding.
In the first special, The Bad Wolf Doctor needs to team up with Nine, to save the universe.
And then in special episode two she has to team up with Ten.
And then in special three she has to team up with Eleven, then Twelve and Thirteen, Fourteen, then a big old xmas special in 2027 that is the first eight-doctor adventure in the canon.
Ending with a regeneration into some middle aged weird looking character actor that’s never really done anything before and certainly I’ve never seenin anything except maybe that one 1980s episode of Who when he or she was a monster in latex, and he or she is brilliant and we finally get an actual run of five years of more than ten episodes a year.
In truth, I don’t think even RTD knows yet, depends on contract negotiations innit.
Blender Lighting
Interesting thing about this month’s tarot shows is that I upgraded from Blender 4.0 to blender 4.4 and it’s quite a bit nicer to look at the timeline editor.
Was sad to find that the render time was up though. From about 3 seconds per frame usually to more like 12!?
Trying it with an old version I see that the lights and textures look way better with 4.4 than 4.0 though. A substantial step up in the way the show looks without me even doing anything other than waiting four times longer per frame.
Timing seems to be heavily dependent upon lighting now. The slow frames are like 12 seconds but the fast frames with minimal lighting and close up on the video are more like 2.
Looks too beautiful now to go back though. Upgraded my cloud-remote render machines too. We will render on four machines from now no. FOUR! The power of it all.
Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m trying to do with it but this month’s shows is the answer. Hide the angry bitter political rant behind a strange CGI tarot show. When the rant comes together well I like it.
Starship
I have blocked out a draft of the next starship video, “V0.4, Forum”.
It’s too long, and too slow paced, and needs an enormous amount of cutting and rearranging.
But there’s a draft, like an animated story board, now.
An animatic I guess they call it.
It’s terrible and wrong so much more script editing needed too.
Ranting
Bingo
Everyone must stop using the phrase “I did not have that on my bingo card” please.
It’s tired and trite and that isn’t even how Bingo works. You don’t compile a card of all the numbers you expect to see. It’s not weird when a number comes up that isn’t on your card.
And the use of the phrase is growing. Soon it will be the only expression of surprise left!
Lets end this now before it’s too late.
Kings
Huh, so the American “No Kings Day” is happening on the same day as the Commonwealth’s “Kings Official Summer Birthday”.
Strange coincidence.
I think there should be no kings and no king’s birthday celebrations FWIW. Power passed down the genetic line like a mutation is ridiculous, and anyway no power should be concentrated in one person like that in the first place.
Not Terrorism
I see Sir Kier Starmer thinks that it’s “inappropriate” for a music festival to have a band that campaigns for peace and an end to genocide, but that it’s perfectly appropriate and may “alleviate” a “grave threat” for a country to bomb nuclear sites in a another country!
He thinks daubing some paint on airplanes as a protest is terrorism, but that using those planes in reconnaissance to support an ongoing genocide by Israel is a good and normal use of them.
What a fucking weasel, absolute death worshiping fuck-knuckle.
Goddamn Labour party loves them some illegal wars of aggression in the middle east. Can’t get enough of it.
Please fuck off Sir Starmer.
He did get his name chanted at Glasto this year after all! And he thought they’d never chant his name like they did Jeremy Corbyn’s name.
Wait….👂 👈
I’m hearing they weren’t chanting “Oh, Keir Starmer”, but instead some profanity!
How rude!
Not wrong, just rude.
The media focus on this one criticism is insane, just massive focus on ensuring everybody is quoted as being against Bob’s chant.
The manufacturing of consent in plain view. No support of Bob allowed to be quoted, only condemnation. No focus at all on the horrors committed by the army itself, just condemnation and contrition from all corners.
And all so much louder than the coverage of death and hunger and destruction and genocide being committed by that army.
Our media environment is so focused and in lock-step, even though it’s in theory free. Yet not a single newspaper saying, you know, the Vylan character has a point! Maybe we should disband a criminal army!
If I chant “Death to the IMF”, it doesn’t mean I want to kill all bankers!
Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, but that statement doesn’t resolve it. 😆
In truth I support Palestine Action more than I support this terrible genocide-enabling so-called “labour” government.
Does that mean I’m going to go to jail?
Will I have to hand myself in?
I wrote my MP to ask:
Dear Emily Thornberry,
I don’t usually bother to write to you on most issues because I figure there is pretty much no point communicating with a whipped MP in a safe seat under first past the post. Such an MP has no reason to listen to their constituents at all, and is entirely a tool of the party leadership.
I make an exception today since I hear your government is about to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Despite them being peaceful, non-violent, and dedicated entirely to preventing the greater crime of the ongoing genocide of Gazan Palestinians.
This is obviously a gross overreaction and a completely unjustifiable act designed not to prevent domestic terrorism but to cover up British forces and UK government involvement and collaboration with the genocide in Gaza.
If we are taking suggestions for groups to ban as terrorists even though they aren’t terrorists, I would like to suggest the Labour Party! The party has helped facilitate a genocide abroad, and continues to supply the perpetrators with arms and intelligence to aid their actions.
I don’t expect you to take that suggestion seriously, but maybe Reform will take it seriously when they get elected in a few years and I suggest it again to them.
After all, a precedent will have been set that groups which aren’t terrorists can be banned under anti-terror legislation anyway. Democracy will have already been eroded.
I was ready to be disappointed by this Labour government, but I confess that the level of gut-wrenching visceral disgust I am experiencing at them surpassed all my wildest expectations. Taking money from the disabled to buy new war-planes from a fascist US president while abetting a genocide in Gaza makes me wonder if Reform wouldn’t be better in the end anyway. At least they might do electoral reform and nationalize the water companies.
Labour’s only hope, the country’s only hope, is to remove Starmer. I wish you had won that leadership election instead of him.
Anyway, as I say, I don’t expect it to make any difference at all because under this election system even MPs in safe seats are nothing but tools of the party leadership and the party leadership seems determined. But I thought I’d let you know that I see you.
I see what you are doing.
I support Palestine Action more than I support this government. Let me know where I should hand myself in for my “crime”.
Yours sincerely,
Adam
Didn’t help though.
Fifteen minutes of debate and less than 30 votes against.
The MPs just wave it through without even trying to object.
The House Of Commons has voted to add a group that doesn’t do any terrorism to the list of banned terrorist groups.
They will do climate protest groups next.
Protest is not terrorism, this government is a fascist authoritarian nightmare.
Big Boring Bill
America’s birthday! And they passedTrump’s big bill just in time.
For a moment there I thought that America might waste a whole bunch of money on healthcare and keeping the workers fit for work!
Much better for the money to go to increasing the number on the spreadsheets of the rich people.
Can you imagine how terrible the world would be if America didn’t kill thousands of people by denying them medicine to keep the spreadsheet numbers high?
Adam Smith would have been so mad, his invisible hand would surely have smite everyone.
Releases
Wordcloud Tarot
A few Tarot shows this month, the best was at the end with a confused date where I did a reading on thecensorship and lies in the media about Glasto.
Watch here: https://wordcloudtarot.com/readings/2025-07-01-gazaandglastonbury/
Reading
Read “What went wrong with capitalism” by Ruchir Sharma.
A mildly interesting description of the major events in world an US economics in the last 50 years. Might be a fair summary for anyone who didn’t live through it or has a poor memory.
In short he thinks what went wrong was government bailing out failure leading to massive debts and increased inequality.
Governments took over all the things instead of letting capitalism sort them out, he reckons, and whenever a big industry or company fails you just get socialism for the rich and a bail-out from new printed money.
Easy cheap money, constant bail-outs, government intervention, leading to zombie companies racking up every larger debt to exist, billionaires who can’t fail due to government support, and a stock market that’s up-only bringing a flood of inefficiently-allocated capital.
Is he right? I mean, maybe, sort of. But when an industry really can’t be allowed to fail, say water supply and waterway management, allowing private capital to extract maximum resources from it isn’t the best method to manage it in the first place. No wonder they need bail-outs. Capitalism fails here because capitalism isn’t the right solution here. We need publicly owned national services, not robber barons without bailouts.
So, you know, half right. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why capitalism fails, but also we shouldn’t even be trying to apply capitalism to every single thing in the first place.
Watching
Watched Severance, both seasons over the course of a week or so.
Late to the party there I’m sure.
Wiping your memory when you walk into another room and wondering why you are in there is just a part of gettingold I’m afraid 😆
You’d think the innie work personas would object and rebel more really, more like Hellany than the rest. Innies don’t get paid, don’t get to spend the wages. Pretty easy to get fired from a job really, just don’t do the work.
Interesting that nobody was a different sexuality inside vs out, guess that’s just fixed by biology huh? No transgender innies either. Maybe that’s for season three.
Don’t really get Helen’s motivation for getting severed at all. Can’t go under cover if you wipe your own memory. Can surely do a better job of it all from the outside.
Anyway. Gripping and stylish show, good fun. Nearly as good as everyone says it is.
Links
Glasto and Gaza
Is a Glastonbury chant the real problem, or Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza - Jonathan Cook
By arming Israel, by organising spy flights over Gaza from RAF base Akrotiri on Cyprus, and by providing diplomatic cover, Starmer has effectively glorified Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children in the enclave. Bob Vylan’s chants of “Death to the IDF” have a far more dangerous counterpart in Starmer’s recital of Israel’s “right to defend itself” when that “defence” involves Israel mercilessly starving Gaza’s population of food, water and power. Bob Vylan are a punk band; Starmer is the British prime minister, the man who directs Britain’s foreign policy and directs its army.
Whatever You Do, Don’t Make Them Uncomfortable - The Bear
The real scandal isn’t the chant - it’s The Mail on Sunday’s deliberate fabrication. Turning “Death to the IDF” into “Death to Israelis” wasn’t sloppy journalism. It was character assassination designed to transform political protest into genocidal incitement. When major newspapers can simply invent quotes and attribute them to public figures without consequence, we’ve moved beyond press freedom into press lawlessness.
Signal Interview
Online Security Interview - Meridith Whittaker
Meridith, Signal President, is so cool. It’s unfathomable that somany people prefer Zuckerberg’s surveillance software.
Here she talks about privacy and ai and data sovereignty.
more
————-That’s just the highlights this month,there’s more in my full public bookmarks from my link-bot on the fediverse or an RSS feed
Around the Fediverse
The people of the world continue to mostly use Facebook andTwitter and Bluesky even as they are all enshitifying ata rapid pace and feeding everything there to theirAI brains. On the Fedi we do it differently. We ownour own network.
Fediverse Video
@elena@aseachange.com has an explainer video:
Dear Fedi friends,I’m really proud to share with you a video I made: “Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media”
In this 4-minute video I explain what the fediverse is to people not familiar with it, mentioning some of its great features and benefits (interoperability, no ads, no surveillance…) and I set it in contrast to the world of Big Tech social platforms….
Unplug
@buermann@mastodon.social wants to unplug:
I do think that the most radical idea is a radical
unplugging, the radical removal of ourselves from all of the billionaires’ platforms.
Bluesky Platforms Vance
JD Vance joined Bluesky this month and even thoughthey do ban people there, they didn’t ban him.
@jalefkowit@vmst.io tells us that:
The main reason I am on the fediverse is because if JD Vance
ever turned up here, he would instantly be eaten by angry furries
Telegram Isn’t Secure
@rysiek@mstdn.social points to an article
Rysiek was featured in an article about how terrible Telegram is:
Remarkable investigation into Telegram by IStories (in Russian) w English version by OCCRP:
👉 Telegram uses a single company with ties to the Russian FSB as their sole infrastructure provider, globally.
👉 Combined with a cleartext device identifier Telegram’s protocol requires to be prepended to all encrypted messages, this allows for global surveillance of Telegram users.
I am quoted in this story.
Signal Swears No AI
With Whatsap about to get adverts, @Mer__edith@mastodon.world says:
Use Signal. We promise, no AI clutter, and no surveillance ads, whatever the rest of the industry does. And as Whatsapp’s AI leaks a user’s phone number,
@Mer__edith@mastodon.world she decries:
‘Meredith,’ some guys ask, ‘why won’t you shove AI into Signal?’ Because we love privacy, and we love you, and this shit is predictable and unacceptable. Use Signal ❤️
AI to polygon models
@gleb@mastodon.art reviews an AI to Polygon system:
A New (Insane?) Hi-res 3D Shape From Algorithm and our review of it - in a new video
Democrats would rather lose than go left
@AnarchoNinaWrites@jorts.horse on Democrat Party.
Nina has been amazing all month, here she points out thatthe Democrats would rather lose than do anything radical:
The American electoral left thinks they’re making an argument about winning elections to an out of touch aging leadership class that just doesn’t understand.
This is false. They absolutely understand your way, the Sanders way, the AOC way, the Mamdani way would win them more elections. They just don’t care. What matters MOST to them and their donors is protecting capital.
Not realizing this will be your fatal mistake, and why the Dems will run a center right platform in 2026 and prolly 2028.
Bonk Wave
Fediverse has it’s own music genre, Bonk Wave.
@keefmarshall@mastodon.online exclaims:
It’s here! The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave*: Bonks of Spring 1
Available free for streaming and download from these fine establishments…
Fiction, Anguish Machine
@rysiek@mstdn.social fictionalizes:
I wrote a thing:The Machines Ran on Anguish
This is not my normal thing. I don’t usually write fiction. But I had this in the drawer for a while, and I don’t think it belongs in the drawer.
So here we are. I spun some yarn.
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