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Showing posts from April, 2021

Fortnightnotes: software freedom, retrofitting, objects

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Now Play This 2021 happened! It was lovely, from the not-flying pre-festival experience of an economy class seat flight sim, to a neighbourhood walk with musical accompaniment to close the festival. Some of it is on YouTube now. I enjoyed the mellow alternative management-sim of Among Ripples: Shallow Waters (rebuilding and maintaining the water ecosystems), and the visions of the future - particularly the mixed responses of the people of post-flood Venice 2089. Other highlights were thinking about the other side of things with games about "bad actors" , and the art concept of the Garden of Early Delights .   Maintain is hosting a darning workshop online on the 29th April  - an opportunity to learn about visible mending and the experience of clothing repair.  I continue to be annoyed about What3Words, but this is now becoming more of a thing for others. As well as the financial/sector commentary here, there's been more people finding examples where the words are in fac

Fortnightnotes: heating, levelling, generations

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 From a new report on UK experiences of food through the pandemic : https://twitter.com/FoodEthicsNews/status/1372536574269923330   If you are in the UK, you can see how polluted it is at your address - http://addresspollution.org/     https://twitter.com/xr_cambridge/status/1372818902036664320   Chris Giles writes in the FT [paywall] about the UK's failure to make progress on reducing the carbon burn of home heating. The Green Homes grant has flopped "because it is highly restrictive, only allowing energy-saving measures such as “secondary” improvements to windows and doors if combined with “primary” measures often inappropriate for older homes."Also - "there is a stealth tax on energy bills through the “environmental and social obligations” required from energy companies... these account for under 2 per cent of a typical gas bill, but nearly 23 per cent of electricity bills."  HT Chris Vallance -  https://twitter.com/radioproducer/status/13728265425905459