Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
If Mastodon is too hard for someone to use, maybe it’s because they’re stupid. Which is a great way to keep out trolls, who are not know for their sparkling intellects.
My view is that the British viewing public is fundamentally racist. I wonder therefore if the viewing figures will suffer from having a black Dr Who
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Tulip Siddiq tells Jonathan Gullis to pay attention. 👍
https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1595054678584463360?t=3gXfXkSbj9BElp5j7JiDOQ&s=19
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
RT @BasitMahmood91@twitter.com
I still find it mind boggling that we can subsidise MPs meals to the tune of £17 million but the government can’t find enough money to extend free school meals to 800,000 children living in poverty.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/BasitMahmood91/status/1594418465531920384
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
RT @joinmastodon@twitter.com
Mastodon has just passed over 2 million active monthly users, a new record! People are voting with their feet. The future of social media doesn't have to belong to a billionaire, it can be in the hands of its users.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1594121627083493378
Geese, species unknown, flying south for the winter just as the first hard frosts are forecast for this area (-4°C).
#altext
Five geese of indeterminate species are silhouetted in black against a greyish blue sky with their wings in various stages of a wingbeat.
Good! Budweiser is widely loathed as beer goes and to subject the fans to having no choice but to drink rat's piss was tantamount to torture.
Now of course if it had been the real Czech Budweiser which is a wonderful beer, it would have been different.
No, he believes in him having free speech along with other people like the orange shitgibbon but not us ordinary plebs!
As a species, it seems to me that we merit extermination!
I live in Luxembourg where people regularly question me as to why on earth Britain took such a self-destructive step as to vote to leave the EU, where people regularly make fun of the utter incompetence of the current British government and where I am ashamed to admit to being British these days.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
UK to have worst economic decline in Europe next year -and by some margin... #Brexit #BrexitIdiots #BrexitBreaksBritain
This is astonishing! Are there really that many cretinous morons who actually believe that the Covid vaccines killed more people than Covid???
Yes, there's quite a few swallowtail species in Thailand where I lived for a while; some are quite large. However the really impressive one over there is the Atlas moth some of which grow to a gigantic size; a 24cm wingspan being known!
#alttext
A picture of a gigantic Atlas moth dwarfing the human hand upon which it has settled. The top tip of each wing terminates in what looks like a snake's head, presumably to deter predators!
The stumbling block for any Swiss style deal will be freedom of movement which the Swiss had to allow to get the deal they have. Whatever the British or their media might preach about the matter, most of the reason for the vote to leave the EU was based on racism; pure and simple, particularly in the so called 'red wall' constituencies where substantial numbers of voters swung from a lifetime voting for the Labour party to voting for the Conservatives. The working class in the UK are far from being enlightened in any way!
If the reinstatement of freedom of movement was the price, I'm not even sure the government could get it through the House of Commons as Labour might well vote against it and the ERG and other supporters of Brexit definitely would.
I think language and nationality have a lot to answer for.
Prof Roy Taylor did absolutely ground-breaking work on the causes and potential cure of Type II Diabetes however, no one over here in Luxembourg has ever even heard of him.
My brother was a consultant physician in the NHS whose remit included dealing with patients admitted with the complications of T2 diabetes (he's retired now). When an item about Prof Taylor's work appeared on a news roundup on TV, including before and after MRI scans, my brother rang to say how staggered he was to see the MRIs which of course he was capable of reading with an expert eye. However, even I could see the difference in the MRIs as it was pretty obvious!
Of course his work was published but in English and most doctors here in Luxembourg tend to be orientated towards the French or German language publications.
I suspect quite a few lives and a lot of suffering and blindness could be avoided if his work was better known over here and of course Prof Taylor put all his discoveries into the public domain.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation
One thing that I do find extremely distasteful was that a number of US doctors jumped on the bandwagon and were offering Prof Taylors treatment regime for quite large sums of money as if they themselves had discovered it!
When I was seven or eight, I was given a copy of the “Ladybird Book of Butterflies & Moths”. The idea was to record seeing each one of the several dozen varieties of butterfly and moths illustrated in the book and when you had ticked off all the varieties in the book, you could send off for a badge or a certificate, or something like that.
The area where I lived was particularly blessed with species variety in the butterfly world as it encompassed chalk down land, salt marsh, ancient woodland on clay soil and a variety of other habitats. This meant that I had little difficulty finding most of the butterflies in the book, but one particular species evaded me: the European swallowtail, “Papilio machaon”. This was not surprising as it is found, to this day, in the UK only around the Norfolk Broads and even there it is rather rare.
I pestered my mother for months to take me to somewhere where we would see a swallow tail and no matter how often she explained that the only place we would be likely to see one was, back in those days, 3/4 of a day's journey on the train. I was distraught; inconsolable, even! I cried, I sobbed, I begged, but all to no avail; in the end, I just had to accept that my ladybird book of butterflies would never be complete!
I had almost completely forgotten about the ladybird book of butterflies until a few months back when a swallowedtail butterfly appeared in my garden. I have never seen one before, nor since. It took me right back to my childhood and the gamut of emotions that I endured due to that damned book of butterflies.
The only problem I have now is “what the hell did I do with that sodding book?”
#alttext
A yellow swallowtail butterfly feeding on the purple Buddleia blossom in my garden in Luxembourg. A rare species even over here!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
"Netflix labels Ancient Apocalypse a docuseries. IMDB calls it a documentary. It’s neither. It’s an eight-part conspiracy theory that weaponises dramatic rhetoric against scholars."
My piece in The Conversation arguing for real #archaeology, not #pseudoarcheology
It's not even visible to me when I look at my own profile so, I think not!
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
