@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 6d ago

I've just received one of those 'ᴏᴜʀ ᴀᴜᴛᴏᴍᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜱʏꜱᴛᴇᴍꜱ ᴅᴇᴛᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴀ ᴍɪɴᴏʀ ɪʀʀᴇɢᴜʟᴀʀɪᴛʏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠɪᴛʏ. ᴛᴏ ʀᴇꜱᴛᴏʀᴇ ꜰᴜʟʟ ᴠɪsɪʙɪʟɪᴛʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴄᴄᴇꜱꜱ, ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴇʀɪꜰɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇꜱꜱ.' messages. If you see one of these, it is DEFINITELY a #phishing attack. Mastodon does not have 'automated systems' to do this. You should report it immediately. Edited: and immediately after, I received a second, identical. Looking at the bot activity, it's targetting pro #Palestine activists.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

"Rather than legally requiring platforms to spy on kids (to exclude them from being targeted by platforms' algorithms), we could prohibit platforms from spying on anyone, including kids, meaning kids couldn't be identified (much less targeted) by algorithms" -- @pluralistic@mamot.fr https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/23/drop-a-dime/#privacy-theater

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: California’s privacy obstacle course (23 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

These are human children, damn you, not units of production for your grey and soulless mills and offices. They should be playing, not being assessed, psychologically profiled and assigned to the optimal task to extract the maximum profit from them for your #kleptocrat masters. This is a monstrous, abhorrent, inhuman proposal. #PrimaryEducation #Capitalism Primary schools to be told to identify children at risk of future unemployment | Youth unemployment | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/07/english-primary-schools-to-be-told-to-identify-children-at-risk-of-future-unemployment

theguardian.com

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 3w ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange But this is true of more or less all legal texts. The law is fundamentally a system for enforcing a system of rules designed to benefit rich on the poor. The GPL is much more significant as a moral text than as a legal one. Yes, you can get away with breaching it (or any other agreement) if you're rich enough; but a moral actor will not, and any actor who does is revealing themselves as not a moral actor.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@gbsills@social.vivaldi.net @pluralistic@mamot.fr Slave traders used to make all their money from trading slaves. We banned it. Opium peddlers used to make all their money by getting people addicted to opium. We banned it. Of course, people still sell slaves and people still sell opium -- but not nearly so many. These bans at least partly work. The same could happen to data broking.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 1w ago

Replying to

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @fabio@manganiello.eu @gazaverified@mastodon.ar.al The number of donations made each week is also rising: #Gaza #GazaVerified #GazaGenocide

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 1w ago

Replying to

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @fabio@manganiello.eu @gazaverified@mastodon.ar.al Source code is here: https://git.journeyman.cc/simon/gaza-stats

Forgejo at Journeyman.cc

gaza-stats

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nusher@mastodon.scot @Simon318ppm@mastodon.sdf.org @peterbrown@mastodon.scot @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Which is why, in Finland, there is only one exam, at the very end of the school career. Exams do not produce well educated children, just stressed and psychologically damaged children. https://careerteachers.co.uk/what-the-uk-education-system-can-learn-from-finland/

Career Teachers

What the UK Education System Can Learn From Finland - Career Teachers

Finland has one of the most successful education systems on Earth but what makes it so successful? Read our blog to find out!

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2w ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange every provider of software makes the rules for the software they produce. For many of them, it's 'you pay us lots of money, you don't get the source code, you don't get to modify it, if we have a dispute it gets settled in a court of our choosing, oh, and we get to feed all your data to our pet #AI.' If you want any software I've written under that sort of licence I'm open to discussing it.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 4w ago

Replying to on universeodon.com

@sigue@universeodon.com @mdhughes@appdot.net @Ardubal@mastodon.xyz @vnikolov@ieji.de @screwlisp@gamerplus.org @kentpitman@climatejustice.social @nosrednayduj@hachyderm.io

In some early #Lisp systems I have played with, it was possible but not advisable to rebind both NIL and T.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

"The seven areas officially in drought are East Anglia, Hertfordshire and the whole of London, Thames Valley, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Devon and Cornwall, the West Midlands, and Wessex (covering Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and south Gloucestershire)." That's most of England's cereal growing land and a lot of its horticultural land. England is going to see a very thin harvest this autumn. #FoodSecurity https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/29/half-england-officially-drought-environment-agency

theguardian.com

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

“You see abject poverty and extreme wealth, you see how the family you were born into affects your life and you understand why inequality is wrong. It’s not just that it perpetuates itself, it’s that it’s fundamentally wrong and it needs to be changed. And that’s my core, that pursuit of economic justice.” -- Miatta Fahnbulleh Well, this actually sounds a bit positive! #UKLabour #UKPol https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/23/who-is-miatta-fahnbulleh-the-radical-thinking-new-uk-energy-secretary

theguardian.com

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2w ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange the community is the community of people who share. Those who will not share exclude themselves; they are not excluded, because there is a simple action that they can take which would include them. And no: if you will not share and share alike, I do not give you permission to profit from my unpaid work. You can pay me.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2w ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange a good actor has no need to fear litigation, because what the #GPL requires is simple and clear and very easy to comply with. So a good actor, large or small, will not be deterred. You're right, of course, that a big bad actor won't be deterred in any case, but there is no substitute document — that I know of — that would be any greater deterrent.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

What, the person in charge of the English #NHS deeply #corrupt? who could possibly have expected it. #Corruption #HealthCare https://www.thenational.scot/news/26298685.yvette-cooper-took-thousands-private-health-linked-donors/

New Health Secretary took thousands from private health-linked donors

The National

New Health Secretary took thousands from private health-linked donors

THE new Health Secretary took more than £165,000 from donors linked with the private healthcare sector, it has emerged.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

“One of the things that further incentivises these geopolitics is that this trade, which is the most corrupt of all trades in the world, feeds our political systems. "If you look at #TonyBlair, who is worth hundreds of millions now, and you look at the way he’s constructed his wealth creation, it’s been directly and indirectly through the decision to invade Iraq, through his association with companies like #BAESystems, so there’s two intertwining aspects.” https://www.thenational.scot/news/26406513.west-profits-gaza-exposed-andrew-feinstein-book/

How the West profits from Gaza and Yemen horrors exposed in book

The National

How the West profits from Gaza and Yemen horrors exposed in book

Andrew Feinstein and investigative journalists to reveal how much money has been made from arms exports involved in Gaza and Yemen in groundbreaking book

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

RE: https://hear-me.social/@TheSwiv/116973340112371440 Who could possibly believe that the #UK #Defence minister was working for a foreign power involved in #Genocide? #Israel #GazaGenocide #Corruption

Quoting

Ben M0SWV 🏳️‍🌈 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇵🇸

@TheSwiv@hear-me.social

Westminster sleaze. Foreign interference. Genocide complicity. #WesStreeting #labour #uklabour #Curruption

Open quoted post

hear-me.social

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @nusher@mastodon.scot @Simon318ppm@mastodon.sdf.org @peterbrown@mastodon.scot @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Second thread: teachers' salaries are depressed in the UK because teaching is feminised: 'women's work'. We expect teachers to be either single women without dependents, or else bringing a second income into a home which already has a breadwinner. This is partly why STEM teachers, often men, are paid more. These expectations are half a century out of date, at least.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@screwlisp@gamerplus.org @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org "The great thing about #Lisp is that it has extremely simple syntax"

... except, of course, for #CommonLisp which is a complete baroque mess.

Of course, it's largely a complete baroque mess because reader macros, and reader macros are useful shorthand, but #$(words)? Really?

And noted also that #Clojure has its own baroquery hard-coded into its reader (#{:a :b [:c @D@mastodon.scot]}, anyone?), which is arguably worse, but...

This might as well be #Perl.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@miss_rodent@girlcock.club @WeirdWriter@caneandable.social 'Sooner shall a camel pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven" Matthew 19:24

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Layan2002@ieji.de if you're happy with it, let us both publicise it! Everyone, Here is Layan's reflection on the current state of the #university in #Gaza at which she hoped to continue her #education: https://www.journeyman.cc/layan/posts-output/2026-08-03-A-Survivors-Diary/ #GazaGenocide

A Survivor’s Diary: The Day I Saw My Future Turn Into a Shelter 🕊️

journeyman.cc

A Survivor’s Diary: The Day I Saw My Future Turn Into a Shelter 🕊️

I used to imagine myself entering those gates after finishing high school. I imagined carrying my books, sitting in classrooms, and building the future I dreamed of. But that day, I saw something different.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 1mo ago

Boosted by @gvenema@fairmove.net

"The protracted slaughter in #Gaza stands as one of the defining moral catastrophes of the modern era. With tens of thousands of #Palestinians killed, disproportionately women, children and infants, the descent of an entire enclave into manufactured famine, medical collapse and total annihilation has unfolded in real time." #GazaGenocide https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/11/americans-in-gaza-financiers-of-a-graveyard-2/

counterpunch.org

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@asllop@mastodont.cat @albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz @ketan@climatejustice.social Welcome to the future! Gotta build those data centres! Gotta drill that oil! Got to buy those mega-pickups! Oh, wait.... Shit. #ThereIsNoEconomyOnADeadPlanet

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Friends in #Gaza: western media are reporting that #Hamas has agreed to disarm in return for #Israel withdrawing from Gaza. This deal is reported to have been negotiated by the so-called #BoardOfPeace. Do you believe that, if this were true, it would be good news? Do you believe that it is true? Do you trust the Board of Peace? Do you trust Israel to comply? #GazaGenocide #Palestine Trump says Board of Peace has reached agreement for disarmament of Hamas - BBC News https://share.google/55mppBQNyw6bfLKuc

share.google

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Picture of child casualties

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nakal@mastodon.social @heisedeveloper@social.heise.de It's not a joke. The M-Expression syntax is defined in the #Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, and my Beowulf implementation can read both S-expressions and M-expressions interchangeably. But S-expressions won out, I think, mostly because people found them easy to use. https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf?page=18 https://git.journeyman.cc/simon/beowulf/src/branch/master/src/beowulf/reader/parser.clj#L53

softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 4.01 patch level 9. 4.0 is *so* last week.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au @floridamarx@mastodon.social this is a very good description of what a #GiftEconomy — and an #AnarchoSyndicalist society — looks like. #AnarchoSyndicalism is a non #Marxist flavour of #Communism, so you can also see this as a #Communist vision. Indeed, it's what Marxists hope will happen when the state that their #VanguardParty has captured withers away, ignoring the fact that vanguard parties are intrinsically elites and, like all elites, will fortify and entrench their elite power.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to on ieji.de

@Layan2002@ieji.de That's posted now, here: https://www.journeyman.cc/layan/posts-output/2026-08-03-A-Survivors-Diary/

journeyman.cc

A Survivor’s Diary: The Day I Saw My Future Turn Into a Shelter 🕊️

I used to imagine myself entering those gates after finishing high school. I imagined carrying my books, sitting in classrooms, and building the future I dreamed of. But that day, I saw something different.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

The only 'pragmatic approach' to #OilAndGas, Mr #Burnham, is to shut it all down, arrest all the executives, and put them all on trial charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The #MetOffice is already predicting temperatures which will cause mass deaths in the #UK within thirty years. #NorthSeaOilAndGas #ClimateEmergency #ThereIsNoEconomyOnADeadPlanet https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/30/burnham-promises-pragmatic-approach-to-north-sea-oil-and-gas

theguardian.com

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@haya200/116975602681617946 Friends You know there are many, many people in #Gaza in need, and one person cannot support them all. I have no spare money to take on anyone new. Haya is living with her parents and two married brothers in a tent on rented land; there are three children in the household. Please, if you have spare money, consider supporting her. #Gaza #GazaGenocide #DirectAidRequest

mastodon.social

Haya .gaza: "Hello, friends. In order to buy food, we need to …" - Mastodon

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

We can have oil and gas now, or we can have a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren to live on into the future. We cannot have both. Which would you prefer? #ClimateEmergency #ThereIsNoEconomyOnADeadPlanet https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26405675.scotland-burning---not-considering-new-oil-fields/

Scotland is burning – we should not be considering new oil fields

The National

Scotland is burning – we should not be considering new oil fields

THE wildfires that tore through the Cairngorms were devastating.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

"Since this enormous initial atrocity, there have been further atrocities on both sides; but, although attacks against civilians in either direction are inexcusable, the scale of death, suffering, rape, damage and destruction wrought by #Israel on #Gaza is orders of magnitude worse than the other way. Yes, there's wrong on both sides. But there is by no means equal wrong on both sides." #GazaGenocide https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2026-07-20-Helping-Gaza/

The Fool on the Hill

Helping Gaza

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@urlyman@mastodon.social I think a key point is that we are not going to have nearly enough 'green' structural materials quickly enough to build all the green infrastructure we need urgently. So if we concentrate on building renewable power generation, we don't have enough material to build new electric arc smelters for steel and aluminium, or electric kilns to make cement. So for the medium term, we don't have structural materials to build anything else. /Continued

The Fool on the Hill

Where

From the discovery of iron working techniques, about 3,200 years ago, up until the widespread exploitation of fossil fuels, about 250 years ago, iron and steel were rare, precious materials. The average person, across the whole world, almost certainly had less than 500 grammes of it. A knife, probably; some tool of their trade, possibly. Even members of the elite — warriors who fought in full armour, for example — probably owned no more than 30kg of iron and steel.The use of fossil fuel changed

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz @ketan@climatejustice.social The real question here is how quickly the post-AMOC cooling will happen. A very plausible trajectory is that our weather could first get hot and humid enough to kill the majority of the population, and then cold enough to make food production extremely difficult for the survivors. #ClimateEmergency #ThereIsNoEconomyOnADeadPlanet

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nada@manganiello.eu This is much better news than I expected when I saw your first post. Congratulations! This is a wonderful achievement.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2w ago

Replying to

@Gardenia@eldritch.cafe @Rania@freesewing.social @apenkop@mstdn.social @palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@fedibird.com @Geri@veganism.social @AnnaLion@piaille.fr @Shibanarchiste@piaille.fr The tragedy is that those who are deliberately causing your suffering have their own history of being on the receiving end of #Genocide, from which it seems they have learned no lessons of humanity.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Nour_gaza_s@mastodon.social Many other people in #Gaza are reporting critical hunger too. The food situation seems to have grown very much worse since May.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Here's @Layan2002@mastodon.social with an extraordinary story of honesty and community solidarity from within #Gaza https://www.journeyman.cc/layan/posts-output/2026-07-16-The-fruit-vendors-cart/

journeyman.cc

🍎 The Children Ran Toward the Fruit…

In one of Gaza's neighborhoods, a street vendor's cart lost its balance, and fruit spilled across the road. 🍎

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2w ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange if you are concerned that you may have a corner case, either apply to the original authors for a parallel licence, or do a clean room reimplantation from scratch. Simple as that. You are not entitled to profit from the gifts of another, unless you abide by the conditions of gift.

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@urlyman@mastodon.social alternatively, if we concentrate on electric smelters and kilns, we won't have enough clean energy to power them. Of course, we could continue to burn #FossilFuels to do either the power generation or the materials processing, but in that case we all die fairly quickly — probably this century. Or else we could use our available power and structural materials to build #GenAI #DataCentres, in which case we all die even more quickly. #ClimateEmergency /Continued

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@urlyman@mastodon.social if we want to survive, we have pretty quickly (within at most 5 years) switch to

Stop burning #FossilFuels altogether;
Build some new clean generating capacity;
Build some new clean materials processing capacity;
Invest in #Organic low input agriculture;
Invest in efficient transport infrastructure to distribute food;
Use an absolute minimum of power or structural materials for anything else at all;
Fight no wars at all.

#ClimateEmergency /Continued

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nada@manganiello.eu Are these your pictures? How close to you was the bomb?

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@infobeautiful@vis.social If you're as old as I am, you know that as you age *everything* gets less cool. The whole planet is substantially warmer than it was when I was a child, and that is NOT a good thing. #ClimateEmergency

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 1mo ago

Boosted by @gvenema@fairmove.net

"The bombs flattening apartment blocks, tent camps and the entirety of #Gaza, are branded with “Made in the USA” and paid for with billions of dollars plucked from American taxpayers. The diversion of public funds towards the slaughter in Gaza, while domestic pillars like healthcare, housing and education deteriorate, renders our silence a form of complicity. We have become the financiers of a graveyard" #GazaGenocide https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/11/americans-in-gaza-financiers-of-a-graveyard-2/

counterpunch.org

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@Rania@freesewing.social @BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to @aral@mastodon.ar.al @apenkop@mstdn.social Call them what they are. They are not 'settlers'. They are thieves and #Terrorists #WestBank

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Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@nada@manganiello.eu My mother remembered the German flying bombs -- 'Doodlebugs', a bit like Shaheed drones -- during the second world war. Also bombs from aircraft. The stories she told of them made me understand how frightening they'd been. Have you had to move your tent, or leave it?

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