So just a heads up for people who aren’t queer, this Pride eve; Pride is around the corner and it’s probably going to feel a little different than usual.

• Expect it to feel angrier. We joke that July is Wrath month, but don’t be surprised if people at Pride events are a bit more on edge, our signs punchier, and our jokes sharper.

• Allies: more than ever before, be aware that you are guests in a queer space. Many of us are going to need the space to feel safe and comfortable for us now, more than ever.

• We have a gay agenda (see the above quote), don’t try to distract from it with platitudes. With trans people under an organized, legislative attack and nearly 60% of Republicans being against same-sex marriage, none of us are safe this year.

• Let’s not do the “Pride events need to be family friendly”. They generally are, but our family is angry.

#pride25 #pride

The Sun had a massive solar flare eruption from a region facing earth last night around 0400 UTC.

A G4 (Severe) geomagnetic storm watch is in effect for late 2 June.

Detrimental effects on satellites and comm. systems are expected.

Strong auroras, visible in Canada, Europe and the northern half of the U.S. are predicted.

Stay tuned for more information. The NASA/NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center website is not fully updated yet.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
#SolarStorm
1/n

I think this is a good article about making software and how agile ideas can be useful, but it seems, mostly not “Agile” ones. https://patricia.no/2025/05/30/why_lean_software_dev_is_wrong.html

Thank you RTD.
https://mastodon.me.uk/@slowe/114582700610876416

I keep waiting for them to say "It's goodnight from me. And it's goodnight from her".

Because... they're the two Ranis.

I’ve spent the last year reading, thinking, and talking with workers about AI and I’ve concluded that AI is not a technology—it’s an *ideology*, and it must be engaged with as such. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/toolmen

Every time someone uses an archive.org link I'm excluded because my ISP "adult filter" block it (and they then deny that they do when contacted about it). Part of the distributed UK censorship so that everyone can deny responsibility.

I want to brag at how brilliant and crafty my husband @datasaurus is.

We live in the PNW which in the summer has warm days but cool nights. Indeed many places do not have AC. But I have terrible allergies so just opening up the windows at night to cool the house off makes me miserable.

So last year he created this filtered air box as part of a kit and rigged it into the living room window so we can bring filtered air in when it's cooler outside.

But this year he got cleverer.

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Bluebottle: What time is it, Eccles?

Eccles: Just a minute, I’ve got it written down here on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning.

From: @lauren
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren/114593222799978324

Unfortunately the #OpenStreetMap wiki is very slow today. We are fighting an aggressive web scraper bot. 10,000 of IPs involved. Randomised User-Agent. Ignoring robots.txt #aibot #ddos

Update: Fixed. We've been able to mitigate the bot traffic. #fail2ban

Something I'd like to note about our constituency dashboards https://open-innovations.github.io/constituency-api-test/ is that the front page is only 134kB (49kB transferred).

An individual constituency dashboard page is generally under 400kB (<100kB transferred) but this is a bit variable depending on the file size of the MP thumbnail that comes from Parliament.

Javascript (for nice tooltips and filtering) is a progressive enhancement; the graphs still work without it because they are static SVG.

After making a constituency hex map of OpenBenches this morning, I've now made one of OpenPlaques https://constituencies.open-innovations.org/themes/society/plaques/

As both of these are crowd-sourced projects, they have selection effects due to how keen different contributors have been in different parts of the country. So if you spot that your constituency is particularly lacking, you might want to help add some bench or plaque inscriptions.

London-based folks, put July 25 in your diary! It's the date of the first performance by a new theatre group, Trans What You Will, which will perform a rehearsed reading of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," directed by and cast with trans and nonbinary performers. The event will be opened by Sir Ian McKellen and staged at The Space Theatre, on the eve of London Trans Pride. And international people won't be left out — a global livestream will be available. Here's more from Attitude magazine, including links to buy tickets for both the IRL event and the livestream.

https://flip.it/j-FQTz

#Theatre #London #Entertainment #SirIanMcKellen #TransRights #TransPride #LGBTQ

#OnThisDay in 1769, while on Tahiti as part of Captain Cook’s first great voyage to the South Pacific, Joseph Banks gives us the first known written description of #surfing... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/extracts-from-the-endeavour-journal-of-joseph-banks-1769 #OTD

@jez Am I totally misremembering that you were involved in https://openplaques.org ?

@Edent I noticed that https://www.openbenches.org/ seems to make multiple requests for https://www.openbenches.org/api/benches.tsv but they all seem to have the same content. Am I misunderstanding something?

Good news! The UK Government has removed one of the restrictions on heat pumps!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3e5plqke3no

Hopefully this will mean more people being able to install energy efficient heating and reduce their dependence on gas.

#green #ASHP #EngergyTransition

Remember I said I wanted to get 10 hours of the Blue Horsehead Nebula, but I probably wouldn't due to trees, clouds, and fog? Well, I went where there were no trees, clouds or fog. And here's 10 hours of it.

We tried making simple gluten free breads based on the recipe we use for gluten free pizza. We added some herbs to the mix. Without toppings to keep them flat, they got some pretty big air pockets considering. Much cheaper than gluten free "pitta" from the supermarket.