Notices by Jon Worth (jon@gruene.social)

@aral Aral, look, you're not wrong. But who can *act*? Who *wants to act*? Draghi can come up with a solid point in a report, but he cannot act. And the incentive for anyone else to act - those with the legislative power to do so in the EU - is too low.

You being right is all very well, but what's your lever to change this?

They have a handy map of where I’m going tomorrow 🙂

Getting here to Öpik conference centre was a trip through car dominated hell

All over Tallinn there are these app controlled bike racks. But I don’t want to have to download an app to park a bike. And I don’t think it even fits a Birdy, let alone a cargo bike. And the regular racks are poor…

Bike parking: build these. Just these. That’s *it*. These stands can accommodate any type of bike. And you can lock the frame to them.

Don’t build ones where only the wheel goes in. Don’t build anything where the mechanism can go wrong.

I know this is boring. But IT WORKS!

Edit: to those going “they can be cut and taped and bikes stolen” - I know. Do I care? No, not really. Tell me a type of rack that can’t be cut with an angle grinder!

FFS. Matthias Ecke MEP (SPD) beaten up while campaigning. The atmosphere in German politics is getting really ugly just now.

I’ve met Matthias - a calm person with a young family. This is really grim news.
https://mastodon.social/@Gleisplan/112382727964437276

With the €150m Wissing is contemplating giving to a flying taxi startup, the German state could purchase 60-70 night train carriages - enough for 2 night train routes. Put these in a state owned leasing pool, and lease them to operators

Better for people, better for the environment, than a sodding flying taxi

This was important enough to merit a sort of Brexit diagram. Simple though. #Threads

The scale of the Musk bullshit is quite something

From FT: "Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has dismissed the strikes as “insane”. “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords and peasants kind of thing,” he said at a New York Times event last week.”

Errr, an insanely rich billionaire (i.e. a lord) exploiting the workers (i.e. the peasants) IS WHAT UNIONS ARE DESIGNED TO PREVENT

https://www.ft.com/content/4143c3ca-e2fd-48bb-b9b7-715454f1d28f?sharetype=blocked

@aral one speaker argued against. Really.

Write a piece about night trains

Dozens of answers across different social networks “what you write won’t work for this or that reason”

All right. But how are you going to put right the problem you raise?

Part of the mess with the rail industry in general is this mindset. There’s always a technical reason something is impossible. And too few people who want to overcome those hurdles

Do it, Musk

It’s going to be fun seeing MEPs and Commissioners trying to cope on some other platform 😜

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-considering-taking-twitter-x-out-of-europe-dsa-2023-10?r=US&IR=T

Unpopular opinion: Germany - while still far too car-centric - is a long way from being the most car-centric country in the EU

I’d argue France, Ireland, Poland, Greece, Italy, Latvia are worse

Germany is at least trying with public transport outside cities. Cycling is viable and improving a bit. #DeutschlandTicket is a good thing. It’s not all bad news

@aral Aral, really, come on. I have posted loads over months and years about the ethics of social networks. So you ought to know I know those questions.

But there is a gap in my knowledge in terms of practically how the AT Protocol could work in future, and whether it would offer some technical advantages ActivityPub does not.

I think it's fair to ask that.

I'd really welcome *technical* and NOT *political/ethical* answers to this question

I am still trying to get my head around Bluesky

Is the AT Protocol - in what it can do already, or in the short term will be able to do - better than ActivityPub that is behind Mastodon?

I can find nothing decent that explains this in layperson's terms…

Feeling today rather like the forces of evil are pre-eminent in the EU.

Not treating asylum seekers like humans. Seeking to destroy Schengen and free movement at the internal borders. All the absurd attacks against IT encryption.

Feeling very down about it all.

“Ah look there’s another idiotic thing Musk has done over on Twitter!”

After a while it gets repetitive

We have ample evidence now he’s not just erratic and unpleasant as CEO but downright dangerous

With Musk in control the place can’t be saved

The main point now: getting people to move en masse - here to Mastodon or indeed to whatever other network(s) make sense. Nothing else makes sense as a reaction

If you care, move