Britain’s electricity system recorded its lowest ever transmission demand today: 12.62GW between 13:00–13:30. Sunny weather, high solar generation and the bank holiday weekend all contributed to the lower level seen on the network. ☀️ The system operated securely throughout.

Watch a team of humanoid robots running a full 8-hr shift at human performance levels. This is fully autonomous running Helix-02 x.com/i/broadcasts/1dJrPEVbZ…

The long-overdue change from First Past the Post to a Proportional Representation voting system simply has to be top of the agenda now.

Well I had a good night's sleep and my usual breakfast... is Reform planning to run the country on a beer buzz?

You buy a German anvil. It contains 83 moving parts and requires winding twice a day. It's forged from excellent steel, holds tolerances across all three striking faces to within three microns, includes a beautifully indexed horn-adjustment mechanism nobody asked for, and requires a proprietary 11-point spanner should you need to replace the rebound calibration bushing. It runs flawlessly for years, but one day it starts up in limp mode because the onboard anvil-management system detects that it's overdue for its 50,000-strike inspection. You search AliExpress for a Chinese anvil, and are presented with a multitude of offerings from such household-name brands as DUKXJYIBF, HDBTGMXI, AND UEJQIP. They're all priced to within a few pennies of each other, appear completely identical except for the nameplate, and obviously all came out of the same factory. You text your blacksmith friend to ask if they're legit. He tells you he got one like that from KIXJBU a few years ago, and that it's been great and a terrific deal. You thank him, but KIXJBU seems to have folded so you buy the one from UEJQIP. When it arrives, it feels suspiciously light. You scratch it and realize it's iron-plated aluminum. You buy an American anvil. It's five times the price of the competition, but it comes from a brand that your great-grandfather used to love. It comes boxed with a warranty registration postcard, twenty pages of safety instructions, assay certificate, and a regulatory slip which lists its FCC certification and ITAR registration. It looks just like your friend's KIXJBU. There's a "Made In China" sticker on the bottom. You buy a Russian anvil. It arrives coated in cosmoline, wrapped in newspaper from 1974, and weighing 40% more than advertised. The finish looks like it was machined with a shovel. The face is not flat, but somehow this does not matter. You drop it off a truck, accidentally leave it outside for six winters, and use it to straighten a bulldozer blade. It's fine. You buy a Swedish anvil. It comes flat-packed in a long cardboard box with cheerful Neo-Grotesk lettering and a line drawing of a smiling man assembling it with an Allen key. The instructions contain no words, only pictograms showing the anvil face, horn, waist, feet, and 112 identical-looking fasteners. Halfway through assembly, you discover that the pritchel hole was installed upside down, but only because you used peg B17 where you should have used peg B71. Once assembled, it is clean, stable, and works better than it has any right to. You immediately wonder whether you should have bought two. You buy a Japanese anvil. It arrives wrapped in rice paper inside a paulownia box, accompanied by a certificate bearing three generations of signatures and a photograph of the first production example being presented to the Emperor. The face has been hand-polished by a seventy-eight-year-old master whose family has made striking surfaces since the Muromachi period. You are given detailed instructions for oiling it with a cloth folded in a specific way. It is the most beautiful object you own. You never quite work up the nerve to strike it.

The use of primary energy on the vertical axis is an old trick by the fossil fuel industry to mislead people into thinking that one unit of fossils = one unit of renewables. In fact, one unit of primary energy for wind or solar electricity is the equivalent of three units of fossil fuels for electricity. Another trick is to pretend we need all those fossils if we switched to renewables. In fact, if we switch to renewables, 12% of the fossil fuel energy disappears because that is how much energy is used to mine-transport-refine fossil fuels uranium for energy, and we wouldn't need to do that anymore A third trick is to pretend we need so much energy if we go to all electricity powered by renewables. In that case, because EVs use 75% less energy than gasoline/diesel vehicles, heat pumps use 75% less energy than combustion heating, etc., energy demand goes down another 42%. In sum, this plot illustrates the real story of where we are and where we need to go. The proper metric is end-use energy, not primary energy. web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/… and here's the paper web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/…

Israel flunkies who worked themselves into a hysterical frenzy when @BobbyVylan chanted "Death, death to the IDF", and insisted he be burned at the stake for incitement to genocide, now perform verbal acrobatics to conclude that "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" is a polite invitation to peacefully resolve a maritime dispute over tea and crumpets.

It's time to see past our differences and remember what connects us. When we realise where our strength lies - in each other - that's when change happens. Join us - join.greenparty.org.uk

🚨 Muslims Taking Over the UK? An important message from Shah Lalon Amin, group director of award-winning Delhi 6 street food group, who in 2023 won the Curry King title at the inaugural Nation's Curry Awards. “I never thought I’d have to write this. But I keep seeing people say Muslims are trying to take over the UK, bring in Sharia law, or push the country toward civil war. And I know some of that fear feels real. So I’m speaking plainly, not to argue, not to attack, just to bring this back to reality. This is not a Muslim-majority country. It is a parliamentary democracy and a country with Christian heritage. Laws are made by elected representatives. Muslims make up around 6–7% of the population in a country of roughly 70 million people. There is no legal, political, or demographic pathway for replacing British law with any religious law. That isn’t secretly unfolding. It isn’t slowly building. It isn’t a hidden long-term plan. The average Muslim in Britain does not spend their time plotting political change. There are no secret strategy meetings. No takeover conversations. No coordinated agenda. And no, we don’t have some secret WhatsApp group discussing who’s arriving by boat next week. The only WhatsApp groups we have are about exam results, family gossip, and who’s bringing dessert for Ramadan. When Muslims get together, the conversations are painfully ordinary. Football results. Who’s top of the league. Ronaldo vs Messi debates. The cost of living. Mortgage rates. Trump being unpredictable. Children’s school reports. Business worries. Holiday plans. During Ramadan, it’s fasting and food. That’s the reality. That’s because we are British, our daily lives look very similar to the average person in this country. What people call “Sharia courts” in the UK are religious councils that mostly deal with marriage and divorce paperwork or mediation. They cannot override British courts. They cannot enforce criminal punishments. They cannot replace Parliament. If anything conflicts with UK law, UK law wins every single time. It’s no different in principle from Jewish Beth Din courts that handle religious matters within British law. Religious arbitration exists under the legal system. It does not replace it. Yes, many asylum arrivals are young men. Dangerous journeys are often made by the strongest family member first so they can seek safety and claim asylum and if approved, reunite with their families legally. This pattern has been seen throughout migration history. Wanting secure borders is reasonable. Wanting efficient processing is reasonable. Criminal behaviour should be punished. But that’s immigration policy, not proof of a coordinated religious invasion. Sometimes I hear people say, “We want our country back,” or “We just want to protect our country.” I understand that feeling. Wanting safety, stability, and a sense of identity isn’t wrong. But Britain hasn’t been taken. It hasn’t been stolen. It’s still here. Its laws, institutions, culture, and democracy are intact. Protecting a country doesn’t mean hating your neighbours, it means upholding fairness, rule of law, and shared values. There is no secret Muslim lobby running Westminster. British Muslims are not politically unified, do not vote as one bloc, and do not answer to a central authority. Most British Muslims are doing what everyone else is doing: working, paying taxes, raising children, worrying about bills, hoping their kids succeed, wanting safe streets and a stable country. We don’t want to change Britain into something else. We are part of Britain. You can want law and order. You can want borders controlled. You can want your country protected. That’s fair. But if anti-Muslim panic exists on your screen and nowhere in your real life, that’s not society—that’s an algorithm selling you fear.” 🇬🇧

RT @vickyfoxcroft: London’s diversity is its greatest strength, not a weakness. Proud to see our Mayor @SadiqKhan calling out the hysteria…

Minnesota should investigate this shooting and prosecute the officer. The federal government will be totally unreliable in this regard because the head of every agency is a Trump toady. There needs to be justice for Renee Good.

To those raising environmental concerns… I think it is a genuinely bad idea for the environmental movement to be associated in people’s minds with stopping people from having elemental joy & ritual for minimal environmental gain. The trees here are carbon neutral. Yes, this fire did cause some air pollution, but whilst we should discourage wood burning for heat in cities (where people have alternative heat sources), an occasional communal fire in a large open space with few homes in the vicinity is acceptable IMO. There are bigger fish to fry & environmentalism will simply fail if we get a reputation as pettyfogging authoritarians just trying to stop everyone’s fun.

I thought a major point people supported the campaign to free Alaa was because of his journey from vile tweets to 10 years in prison for standing up for the human rights of everybody to live in dignity whatever one’s faith, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. theguardian.com/politics/202…

Liverpool March for Palestine stopped by LUSH to honor their solidarity with Gaza

I’m not leaving until HMP Bronzefield accept an ambulance to transfer hunger striker Qesser Zuhrah to hospital for urgent medical care that she desperately needs.

The Together for Palestine fund is trying to get a Palestinian lullaby to Christmas No 1 in the UK charts in an effort to help provide aid to the people of Gaza, but also showcase their culture and creativity. 👇🇵🇸👇🇵🇸👇 🔗 lnk.to/t4plullabyinsta

A good time to revisit this thread. 25 instances of Mainstream Media Madness

This account recommended for those who wish to follow the ongoing Genocide in Sudan

On September 2, we abandoned our home. No, not abandoned, we were torn from it, as a limb is torn from the body, bleeding, twitching, still longing to move though it has been severed. And I tell you: the earth itself convulsed. For seven hundred days we remained in the north, chained not by walls but by despair, enduring four displacements that broke us bone by bone. Once, shells tore through our house while we were still inside, and we fled half-buried in dust. Once, we moved from one broken dwelling to another, dragging behind us our shame like beggars. Then to a school, where the stench of a thousand crowded bodies suffocated even the thought of sleep. Then to a ruined university, where we spent a month crammed into a room no larger than a coffin, waiting for dawns that brought no light. We starved like animals. Famine stretched across months until my mother, that saint who once baked bread with her eyes closed in the rhythm of life, now ground barley meant for beasts, corn meant for ducklings, seeds meant for birds. She baked bread out of humiliation itself, and we ate it with trembling hands, our stomachs rebelling, our souls rebelling more. Each mouthful tasted of degradation, of the slow erasure of what it means to be human. And still we obeyed. We did everything the army demanded of us, bowed our heads, silenced our throats, extinguished our cries. We clung to life with the stubborn hope that staying upon our land was worth every humiliation, every hunger, every burial in advance. Because leaving, we knew, was the end. Leaving was death. Leaving was never to return. And yet we left. That morning, we rose like mourners. We did not speak; what word could one utter at one’s own funeral? We gathered the remnants of a life, crumbs, rags, useless tokens, and felt them heavier than the gravestones of our ancestors. The driver shouted, ordering us to climb into the car. His voice struck us like whips upon slaves, and yet we did not move. For a moment we waited, for the stones, the trees, the very air to cry out, “Do not go! Stay!” But the silence was merciless. When the car moved, it was not wheels that turned, but the axle of history, grinding us into strangers upon our own road. And I knew, even as I breathed, that this was not merely leaving a city. It was leaving faith. I saw Christ again upon Golgotha, yet this time He was forced to lay down the cross, mocked not by executioners but by history itself. I saw Muhammad once more cast out from his home, driven into exile not by choice but by the cruelty of men. I tell you, we were forced into apostasy, betrayal without sin, exile without crime. We were robbed not only of walls and roofs, but of the sacredness that bound us to them. And now I write, with these trembling hands, a testimony for eternity: that we were expelled. That we walked not of our will but of compulsion, that we tasted exile as one tastes poison, drop by drop, until the soul itself convulses. By God, we never loved exile, who loves the grave in which he is buried alive? Yet our homeland turned its face, and in that moment it became stranger to us. We wander now not only as exiles before men, but as exiles before ourselves. We are the funeral of our own hearts, walking. And if there is one thing you must carry from these words, let it be this: that there is no silence deeper than the silence of a land that once knew your name, and will never speak it again. #GazaGenocide

Very impressed by the Green Party politicians' humane approaches to this.