Hugh Barnard

@hughbarnard

Ecology, local democracy, FOSS, AI, ethics, radical financial reform/alternative currencies, music: miscellaneous mischief. Pic is Umi&me at the Grand Soleil in Gruissan @hughbarnard@post.lurk.org and

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Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir hughbarnard.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· 20d

www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

The thief of ideas from the Tao of Programming

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· 22d

Just sayin'. It's clear (and pretty easy, even for politicians) to give the water cycle a helping hand in towns. Start ripping up concrete in yards, paved drives, tarmac 'playgrounds', astro-turf(d) playing fields etc. etc. All of this can be incremental and incentivised/nudged too. #climate

Pictorial comparison of water cycle with and without urbanisation.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· 26d

Yes.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· May 26

We also had youth clubs and other non-commercial (unlike malls) safe places to hang out. This was a favourite: s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/68/32...

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· May 14

Ha, I went to this at the Dome in Brighton, it was extraordinary. Band superb as well. We had about twenty minutes of encore as well, everyone belting out Gloria as an added treat. #music

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· May 3

Make/order something like this. This was self-defence because the 'contractors' like to strim/kill everything they can. Actually just let it grow, that's what it 'does'.

Sign saying please do not mow with with flower on it.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Apr 14

Graph of share price of business development companies, shoing large recent dip. Limit of redemptions too, apparently

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Apr 6

They don't actually have 'social permission' there's just been an attempt to stuff it into everything, so the usage figures look better. See below.

Block AI enhancements?

You won’t see new or current AI enhancements in Firefox, or pop-ups about them. Afterwards, you can unblock anything you want to keep using.

What will be blocked:

Translations
Image alt text in Firefox PDF viewer
Tab group suggestions
Key points in link previews
Chatbot providers in sidebar

Blocking also affects extensions that use AI provided by Firefox.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Apr 2

2/2 Earlier.

Next, the social thread. As a concept that requires a complete essay (a booki, in fact) but needs a more compact discussion here, I advance the idea of antisocial and social space.

Antisocial, the architectural conveyor belt spaces for 'commercial browsing' without social connection. Fast food chains now have touch screens, customers order quickly without talking to the counter staff who can, of course, then be reduced in number. Obviously, cars isolate too, though as city folk we talk less than we should, even in shared public transport, for we are entranced by the contents of our electronic devices.

Our neighbourhood cafés close, replaced by expensive (and therefore exclusive) coffee chains where digital nomads sit silently peering into screens. Much of the apparent public realm is also now private and enclosedii, so no-one may sit, talk, sing or protest. Finally, we close or convert our libraries or community centres, after all, there is austerity and these items do not self-finance and the numbers do not add up. We close social space containing social activity and replace it by anti-social space supporting colonised (see Lefebvreiii) and transaction based activity.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 26

My friend Melina: melinamerlin.com has some work in this Hastings exhibition.

Poster of the Open Odyssey exhibition in Hastings running until the 31st May.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 22

We are so with the Zeitgeist.

One foot in the rave from the Daily Star front page, old people go out dancing more than Gen-Z

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 16

The council removed a tree stump but decided to tarmac the tree pit. We just dug it back up, tree going in after a couple of days. Tree pit, the clue is in the name.

Tree pit with spade used to remove tarmac stuck in it!

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 16

Yep, from my book, database joins are (one) the 'enemy' of privacy.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 15

I know 'npm', let's not. #software #bloat

Installing npm, command line showing the amount of pure crap.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 14

Haha. Things haven't changed that much at hughbarnard.org in over twenty odd years.

May 2002, hughbarnard.org website via the wayback machine.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 5

I'm giving this tomorrow at 11.30, but I'll put the slides on my website soon afterwards.

Day 3: Fi, 6th March
Sustainable Communities
TRANSITION _

ROYAL DOCKS ms
CENTRE FOR
SUSTAINABILITY

Talk called Doing Money Differently 11.30

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Mar 3

This is like the days before our exit from Citigroup. We wrote scripts to fill in our over complex and irrelevant 'timesheets'. The (a small bit of) revolution starts here.

Forced to use AI at work, I hate it. Usage is monitored so I've set mine up to plave a SIM city clone, burning through tokens, making crap cities that quickly go bankrupt

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 28

Not them gov.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 26

Thanks, can loop round too:

Allister Heath
The sinister, anti-democratic forces behind allister heath must be exposed at all costs

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 26

#RoyalMail chat hell.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 23

I lifted this cheery little chart from this: www.theguardian.com/environment/... People don't really appreciate 'wet bulb'. #climate

Graphs of survivable temperatures, temperature and humidity for under and over 65s.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 12

I borrowed this from a post on Mastodon. V. useful. Choosing. please wait.

Picture of the permit crab. You may do one bad thing today.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 9

Yes.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Feb 5

Found my way back from this: fosdem.org/2026/schedule/ Haven't been since 2020, it's a pretty extraordinary world that few people know about. Also had a Dame Blanche at La Brouette which never changes thank goodness.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Dec 21

Ha, agree, in a similar vein:

Numbers

Why are politicians, officials, and ‘industry’ so keen on numbers? They’re an easy but very crude method of deciding and evaluating nearly anything. We can build one thousand homes or hospitals but if (as often, with housing) the quality is bad, people are unhappy in them, we’ve built nothing. Arithmetic as fairness? Nope.

Qualitative analysis is, of course, harder but that’s no reason to neglect it or cheat by providing words for people to say, possibly to go with the endless photo-ops.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Nov 25

From: www.motherjones.com/environment/... I managed to get a couple of fruit trees into Springfield Park about 20 years ago, But so much more is possible. Go Winstanley and Everard.

In a study published last month in the journal Earth’s Future, Galli modeled what this change could look like on a wide scale in São Paulo, Brazil. In a theoretical scenario in which the city turned its feasible free space—around 14 square miles—into gardens and farms, every couple of acres of food production could provide healthy sustenance to more than 600 people. Though the scenario isn’t particularly realistic, given the scale of change required, “it’s interesting to think about that, if we use more or less all the areas that we have, we could provide the missing fruits and vegetables for 13 to 21 percent of the population of the city,” Galli said. “Every square meter that you do can have a function, can be useful to increase the access to healthy food for someone.”

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Nov 13

2/2 Me, in about 2018:

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Oct 29

Haha. That's nothing, I'm waiting to experiment with a small child in my own back garden.

My back garden a dense assortment trees and bushes. Some fruit picking with a step ladder.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Oct 12

Via @tedgioia.bsky.social Good news in many ways, even the consumer population are waking up. Next thing is to leave, but 'convenience' will kill us all.

Hugh Barnard@hughbarnard· Oct 6

It's madness I tell you, madness. Very destructive madness too. #AI