#NationalTrust votes to ditch #Barclays and seek banking partner more in tune with its environmental policies
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/nov/07/national-trust-agm-barclays-environment-policies

Someone out there must have built this surely. Is there anything like Facebook's memory feature for the Fediverse that shows you what you posted on this date in previous years?

"Kellogg's has stopped using rice grains in Rice Krispies and Coco Pops in the UK due to "changing weather conditions" that have disrupted supplies.

Crops have been hit by dry weather in key producing countries in Asia, reducing harvests and driving up prices."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqvg0y44ym7vo

Bit of a canary in the coalmine moment there, rice makes a much bigger contribution to a lot of people's diets than in the form of breakfast cereal.

#ClimateDiary #FoodSecurity

If our telly really is listening to us for marketing and LLMs, cat owners are going to be providing some very confusing training data. I just said "In a minute love, just let me finish making the coffee then I'll let you in the bedroom to stand on her" out loud.

#StokeHill Roundabout - Thursday 5th November 2026, 8am-9am

Please join us for a one hour peaceful protest to highlight the Council’s inaction in bringing forward safety improvements. Cyclists, pedestrians and on- foot motorists are all welcome.

We will be counting the number of children and other vulnerable people crossing the roundabout. We will also be asking adults what they hope for “What does good look like” for a safer roundabout?

We will send the results to our local Councillors in time for their next meeting with the roundabout designers.

#Exeter #Devon #SafeStreetsForAll

I do sometimes think that if we lived in a better world and my life had worked out differently it would have been nice to have had children. Then I hear sentences like "No you _can't_ eat the butter pat, I've just wiped you!" and I think I probably have a lot less stress this way.

Lunch with the family. Older niece is going to a Halloween party so younger niece (9) will be trick or treating on her own. She announced that she was planning on telling everyone her sister was ill and could she have an extra sweet for her too, and then eating them. I told her she had a great future as an internet scammer ahead of her.

RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@beardyandrew/117529382477809472

If anyone wanted to honour #PatrickStewart by supporting the organisations he was proud to have worked with, the websites are

https://refuge.org.uk/

and

https://combatstress.org.uk/

Stockpile advice is not realistic, say low income families

"According to Prof Ruth Patrick, from the University of Glasgow, the UK government's guidance "will appear at best tone deaf and at worst almost insulting to the 14 million households currently facing poverty across the UK".

She is leading the Changing Realities project, and added: "There is a profound mis-match between this suggestion and the daily realities for parents and carers on a low income up and down the country who are struggling to get by, especially as costs continue to rise and the temperatures drop."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6x238kpxj8do

#Poverty #Inequality #DisasterPrep #UKpol

Yes I know going to Mastodon to complain about hostile tech is like seeking validation in your hatred of alcohol at a temperance meeting. But I just need to rant about how hard my parents have found something as simple as getting some tickets for a free community showing of Robinson Crusoe of all things. They couldn't handle setting up the account on the ticketing platform so I ended up doing it for them, and after showing my Dad several times on Monday night how to show the QR code on his phone he's told me he can't do it and could I print them for him? And my parents are not isolated or vulnerable, they have lots of people around them to help with things much more important than this, but if even community theatre events or whatever are locked away behind interfaces elderly people find inaccessible no wonder so many of them are lonely and isolated.

This is the danger of AI, not just that it can be used to produce disinformation but it makes it impossible to trust any information.

Wall blown over by Storm Boelo in Whitby sparks AI images debate
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6m2dx2jpglvo

They ended up getting dinner at four twenty instead of five, because I'm nominally the smarter organism and I don't have a fucking clue what time it's supposed to be either

"I have no concept of clock changes, am sure that it's dinner time, and demand that you stop reading and feed me THIS INSTANT!"

A combination of a fire in April destroying one of the UK's refrigerant recycling plants and the unusually hot summer causing huge numbers of appliances to fail has caused a massive backlog of fridges and freezers waiting for recycling, risking fly tipping and the escape of harmful refrigerants into the environment.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/21/norfolk-frightful-fridge-mountain-recycling

My friend just handed me a book and said "I just finished this, it's about climate change and the end of the world and has one of the worst sex scenes I've ever read in, you'll love it."

#SilentSunday

Spent today helping a friend clear some ground for a new septic tank and disturbed this little guy in the process. We tried to cause minimal toad trauma in the relocation but took the opportunity for some photos.

There's a poll going round the Fedi at the moment about whether you would be able to use an AED/defibrillator on a woman having a heart attack and a lot of people are commenting they'd let the trained person who brought it use it. In the UK at least you don't need to wait for ambulance staff to bring it, they're in lots of public locations like stations, shopping centres and churches. In an emergency if you're on the phone to the ambulance service they will tell you where the nearest one is, but if you want to familiarise yourself with the locations of nearby ones just to be prepared you can see them here: https://www.defibfinder.uk/

The grass is green again, but it's still pretty worrying underground. Severe drought declared in six areas of England as reservoirs run low

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/15/severe-drought-declared-six-areas-england-public-water-supplies-threat

RE: https://mastodon.social/@LiamOMaraIV/117411548415375303

More information here https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/06/archaeology.science