Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate

@hutchingsmusic

Composer, climate campaigner, dad. Main site: Songs trying to save the world: Listen: Videos: he/they, Edinburgh

2.246 Folgt2.171 Follower4.232 Posts

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Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· 26d

This is the essential point! Pretty much every time a government spends money on solving an issue, IT COSTS LESS OVERALL TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM THAN TO KEEP TREATING ITS SYMPTOMS! The UK *should* be taxing (or borrowing) to do this, because it will save money in the long run!

"Besides, such framing wilfully ignores the fact short-term spending on social welfare is often an investment in long-term savings. Take Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping. Economic analysis for the charity Crisis in 2018 estimated that permanently ending homelessness in Britain would cost £9.9bn over 10 years. But it would save £26.4bn by reducing pressures on the NHS, criminal justice system and benefits."

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· 26d

So, basically, Modo Energy are doing this:

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· 26d

oh god not another part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Gwyneth Paltrow as Ms Pepper (Potts) in Iron Man

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· 29d

FFS don't make an AI video, anyone in the arts sector should know better by now

shot from above video of someone opening a book, the "music" inside is utter nonsense and goes in multiple directions

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 21

I know which one you should pick...

French person at a window saying "oui... hon hon hon... oui!"

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 20

Yes, there are definitely competent levels of sandwich making going on here...

A robot manipulator cutting a badly made sandwich with what appears to be a palette knife, which wearing tiny rubber covers on its "fingertips" which it definitely didn't put on by itself.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 18

Sort out your alt text please, this is almost as bad as not having any at all

Screenshot of the above with the alt text shown: it just says "image". My suggested alt text: "a map of the UK showing seats won by each party, and there's a yellow/orange party not mentioned in the above post, winning 59 seats, which appears to be a spurious amalgam of the SNP and Plaid Cymru."

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 17

Cult meme from King of the Hill:
"is this the free speech conference?"
"you can't report on us unless you only say what we want you to!"
"yeah, this is it"

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 15

WTF is this bullshit on the Y axis?

Y-axis: equally spaced numbers 134, 136, 138 and then 139.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 12

"I didn't have a... stroke" Somebody should probably tell the left side of his face that

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 8

Spongebob "Squidward looks out of a window" meme, with "Australia and NZ" indoors behind the bars and "99% of the world" running outside in the sunlight

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 7

I present my proudest (and only) achievement in font design: Comic Avec.

Comic Sans, but every single letter and character has had a gratuitous serif added to it, usually in the most annoying and ugly place possible. Even the full stop and comma have had serifs added to them. Where characters have an accent or diacritic, the serif is usually added to that instead of to the letter itself (but not consistently). It's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. It took about half an hour. Sorry everyone.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jul 2

Oh come on, I know football players are expensive and England's defence is bad but that seems ridiculous.

Front page of Daily Telegraph, showing "Defence black hole triples to £15bn" next to England football players captioned "Kane comes to England's rescue... again"

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 25

Reposted with alt text:

Two graphs: the first is of carbon capture capacity, showing projections of up to 1800 megatons by 2025 and up to 6000 megatons by 2040. The actual carbon storage is shown as a completely flat line on the x-axis - so close to zero that we can't see the difference.
The second graph is of solar power. Actual solar electricity generation is far higher than any prediction guessed. The level in 2025 (over 2000 TWh) is higher than the 2040 estimate for any projection starting in 2015 (i.e. we're at least 15 years ahead or schedule) and even the most optimistic projection from 2020 doesn't have solar power getting this high until 2030.
TLDR: solar power is growing faster than anyone expected. Carbon capture is growing slower than anyone expected.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 25

LOL this Tweet aged poorly:

Tweet from Brian Callaci: "Have we found the one consistent "vote blue no matter who?" Democrat" in reference to James Carville backing Graham Platner

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 15

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 12

Nice! Unsurprisingly I cannot get ahead of the former footballer (maybe I need a nom de plume) but at least I'm third on the list of actual results.

Google search result for "who is Chris Hutchings?" At the top: "Christopher Hutchings (born 5 July 1957) is an English former footballer and manager. He played for a number of clubs, including Chelsea and played more than 100 games for Brighton & Hove Albion and
Huddersfield Town". At the bottom: "Chris Hutchings – award-winning choral composer
hutchingsmusic.co.uk
https://www.hutchingsmusic.co.uk"

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 4

@kcgreen.bsky.social hey, Ticket Tailor paid you for this ad, right? Just in case they didn't, here's their contact details for your lawyer: www.facebook.com/tickettailor

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· Jun 3

The USA: "Our man-baby president wants his face on the $250 bill that doesn't exist yet by next month" (it usually takes 6+ months to launch a new legal tender bill apparently, and there's a law against living people being on them) The Bank of England: "Choose an animal from our shortlist or STFU"

From 3 June to 3 July, we are consulting the UK public on which native animals to use as the central image on each of the four denominations of our next series of banknotes. Please share your views.

The shortlist
Mammals Birds Amphibians, insects & fish
bottlenose dolphin
brown hare
European hedgehog
grey seal
pine marten
red fox
Atlantic puffin
barn owl
common kingfisher
Eurasian curlew
great spotted woodpecker
white-tailed eagle
Atlantic salmon
basking shark
buff-tailed bumblebee
common frog
emperor dragonfly
marsh fritillary butterfly

Only the animals on the shortlist can feature as the main images on the new series. We are not seeking any alternative nominations.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 25

And I *refuse* to believe that AI is capable of doing Schenkerian analysis to produce a summary of a musical score:

Screenshot of a musical score open in Adobe Acrobat, with a suggestion above: "This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant." (It's only 11 pages, AI, you lazy fucker.)

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 20

This is why AI bros need the humanities. web.archive.org/web/20121008... (Original story by squid314 on LiveJournal) "In the treasure-vaults of Til Iosophrang rests the Whispering Earring, buried deep beneath a heap of gold where it can do no further harm..."

In the treasure-vaults of Til Iosophrang rests the Whispering Earring, buried deep beneath a heap of gold where it can do no further harm.

The earring is a little topaz tetrahedron dangling from a thin gold wire. When worn, it whispers in the wearer's ear: "Better for you if you take me off." If the wearer ignores the advice, it never again repeats that particular suggestion.

After that, when the wearer is making a decision the earring whispers its advice, always of the form "Better for you if you...". The earring is always right. It does not always give the best advice possible in a situation. It will not necessarily make its wearer King, or help her solve the miseries of the world. But its advice is always better than what the wearer would have come up with on her own.

It is not a taskmaster, telling you what to do in order to achieve some foreign goal. It always tells you what will make you happiest. If it would make you happiest to succeed at your work, it will tell you how best to complete it. If it would make you happiest to do a half-assed job at your work and then go home and spend the rest of the day in bed having vague sexual fantasies, the earring will tell you to do that. The earring is never wrong.

The Book of Dark Waves gives the histories of two hundred seventy four people who previously wore the Whispering Earring. There are no recorded cases of a wearer regretting following the earring's advice, and there are no recorded cases of a wearer not regretting disobeying the earring. The earring is always right.

The earring begins by only offering advice on major life decisions. However, as it gets to know a wearer, it becomes more gregarious, and will offer advice on everything from what time to go to sleep, to what to eat for breakfast. If you take its advice, you will find that breakfast food really hit the spot, that it was exactly what you wanted for breakfast that day even though you didn't know it yourself. The earring is never wrong.

As it gets completely comfortable with its wearer, it begins speaking in its native language, a series of high-bandwidth hisses and clicks that correspond to individual muscle movements. At first this speech is alien and disconcerting, but by the magic of the earring it begins to make more and more sense. No longer are the earring's commands momentous on the level of "Become a soldier". No more are they even simple on the level of "Have bread for breakfast". Now they are more like "Contract your biceps muscle about thirty-five percent of the way" or "Articulate the letter p". The earring is always right. This muscle movement will no doubt be part of a supernaturally effective plan toward achieving whatever your goals at that moment may be.

Soon, reinforcement and habit-formation have done their trick. The connection between the hisses and clicks of the earring and the movements of the muscles have become instinctual, no more conscious than the reflex of jumping when someone hidden gives a loud shout behind you.

At this point no further change occurs in the behavior of the earring. The wearer lives an abnormally successful life, usually ending out as a rich and much-beloved pillar of the community with a large and happy family.

When Kadmi Rachumion came to Til Iosophrang, he took an unusual interest in the case of the earring. First, he confirmed from the records and the testimony of all living wearers that the earring's first suggestion was always that the earring itself be removed. Second, he spent some time questioning the Priests of Beauty, who eventually admitted that when the corpses of the wearers were being prepared for burial, it was noted that their brains were curiously deformed: the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action.

Finally, Kadmi-nomai asked the High Priest of Joy in Til Iosophrang for the earring, which he was given. After cutting a hole in his own earlobe with the tip of the Piercing Star, he donned the earring and conversed with it for two hours, asking various questions in Kalas, in Kadhamic, and in its own language. Finally he removed the artifact and recommended that the it be locked in the deepest and most inaccessible parts of the treasure vaults, a suggestion with which the Iosophrelin decided to comply.

Niderion-nomai's commentary: It is well that we are so foolish, or what little freedom we have would be wasted on us. It is for this that Book of Cold Rain says one must never take the shortest path between two points.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 14

How dare you skip the many, many novels about viola players and double bass players that definitely exist

"10 novels about violinists"
"10 novels about cellists"

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 14

Helluva typo here

"Monk confirmed she had reigned from Reform UK" (should be 'resigned')

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 10

The Board of Deputies, apparently:

Britta from Community meme: I can excuse holocaust denial but I draw the line at supporting palestine

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 8

Kind of a shame that the last 7 seats are likely to mess up this nice arithmetic progression of the five smaller parties. On the bright side, Reform are not the second biggest party (I was hoping the Greens might beat them to take third, but not quite).

Scottish Parliament seats with one region still to declare: SNP 57, then Labour 17, Reform 15, Greens 13, Conservatives 11, Lib Dem 9.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 8

In good news at least someone on their team seems to have got it right a little while later (and even used the correct pronoun in the BBC's alt text with no quibbling)

Screenshot of BBC News live page at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c775r3nmp5gt:

Two trans MSPs elected to Holyrood

published at 20:47
20:47
Iris Duane wears a dark blazer and green jumper. She has dark hair
Image source, PA Media
Iris Duane becomes the second openly trans MSP ever elected to Holyrood, after Q Manivannan was elected on the Edinburgh regional list earlier.

Duane was elected on the Glasgow regional list, and both of the new MSPs come from the Scottish Green Party.

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 8

@mccoolwrites.bsky.social please fix the 08.33 entry on www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7... - it's pretty clear that Robison meant "divisive" rather than "decisive"!

Reforms wins would be 'sad day' for Holyrood - Robison
published at 08:33
08:33
When asked about Reform's chances, Robison says: "It would be a very sad day if they have representation in the Scottish parliament, I hope they do not."

This comes despite pollster predictions that the party are on course to gain some MSPs.

She called the party "insidious" and decisive" adding "it's easy for them to point the finger at some of the most vulnerable in society".

She said the SNP have ruled out working with the party "very, very clearly".

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 7

use alt text and don't use AI graphics please

Batman breaks a gun: "AI is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it."

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 6

80-140mph, but definitely not slower than 80mph.

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed

Chris Hutchings #ChoirsForClimate@hutchingsmusic· May 6

Things that *should* actually be resigning matters: Nigel Farage's £5m donation, Kemi Badenoch's website hacking, Keir Starmer's appointment of Peter Mandelson Things that really aren't: describing yourself as a "spokesman" when you've spoken on stage on the Red Cross' behalf.